Lightning Strikes Thrice: 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' Burns Through Box Office Competition | Weekend of January 2, 2026

Before we move further forward into 2026, let’s take a look back at the final weeks of 2025.  

• The year finished up 1% from 2024, reaching $8.7B in domestic box office dollars — an encouraging result in a year that relied heavily on tentpole moments and strong holiday play. The largest three-day weekend of 2025 was Memorial Day (5/23–5/25), highlighting the continued importance of event-driven moviegoing.
  

• The top-grossing film of 2025 was A Minecraft Movie, which debuted in April and went on to close the year with over $400M domestically, showcasing the durability of IP-driven releases.
  

• As expected, the holiday corridor once again delivered strong numbers. Cinema overall was the big winner, with both holiday weekends (12/19–21 and 12/26–28) posting strong box offices. Avatar: Fire and Ash led the market on both weekends, but it was the wide array of releases that helped push 2025 across the finish line.

• Family titles like Zootopia 2 and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants drove multigenerational attendance, while Anaconda served action-adventure comedy fans. On the prestige side, The Housemaid, Marty Supreme, and Song Sung Blue delivered solid adult turnout. Adding to the momentum was the continued strength of Wicked: For Good, which remained a reliable holdover deep into the holidays.

The first weekend of 2026 built nicely on that momentum. Total box office was up approximately $30M versus the same weekend last year.

Pandora’s Box (Office)

Avatar: Fire and Ash hit theaters December 19 and has continued its box office dominance since, holding the #1 spot in both admissions and revenue for the third consecutive weekend. The Detroit Times calls the way director James Cameron plays with color, technique, and special effects “transporting,” even if the story is a bit “clunky and repetitive.”

Zootopia 2 followed closely in the #2 position and posted an impressive performance, retaining nearly 100% of its box office week-over-week. The result once again highlights how powerful family-friendly titles can be during this period and reinforces their importance to the overall health of the box office.

Supreme Victory: Chalamet's ping-pong performance paddles the competition

We are now officially in the awards season, which kicked off this past weekend with the 2026 Critics Choice Awards. Timothée Chalamet nabbed the win for Best Actor for his performance in Marty Supreme, which has been holding firm at #4 in box office sales for three weeks.  

This weekend brings the Golden Globes, a period that typically supports strong holdovers for nominated films, even as the release calendar begins to thin.

Avengers, assemble the 2026 slate!

Looking ahead, Hamnet is set to expand into wide release. The film debuted in limited release in 2025 to qualify for awards and opened in fewer than 1,000 theaters, making its modest initial traction unsurprising. With broader availability in the coming weeks and increased awards visibility, Hamnet is well-positioned to find a larger audience as the season unfolds.

2026 is shaping up to be a very promising year with a robust slate of major franchise and sequel releases alongside a strong lineup of highly anticipated original titles. On the franchise side, titles from the industry’s most reliable brands, including Avengers, Spider-Man, Toy Story, and Dune are well-positioned to drive event-level turnout and sustained attendance across multiple demos.  

Complementing these tent-poles are some new and original movies that should broaden the appeal and keep movie goers coming back throughout the year. Projects such as The Odyssey, The Drama, The Dog Years, and Supergirl are already generating meaningful buzz and signal a healthy balance between IP-driven scale and fresh storytelling.

Taken together, the 2026 release calendar points to a year with both high ceilings and strong consistency, setting the stage for sustained box office growth and a return to more predictable, diversified performance patterns across the market.

How The People Platform's audience measurements can help drive insights

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