Monitoring desk
ISLAMABAD/LOS ANGELES: Industry watcher Exhibitor Relations said that “Avatar, The Way of Water” has stayed atop the North American box office for a fifth straight week, taking in an estimated 38.5 million dollars on a long holiday weekend on Sunday.
Avatar
According to the AFP, that brought the domestic total for the Disney/20th Century blockbuster the story of a blue-skinned race on a distant moon to impressive $570 million dollars, on top of an international total of 1.33 billion dollars.
“Avatar, The Way of Water” a sequel to the 2009 film that was the top grosser ever, could be the first film to hit 2 billion dollars worldwide since the Covid pandemic struck.
In second place over a four-day Martin Luther King Jr. weekend was the scary-doll thriller “M3GAN,” from Universal and Blum house, at an estimated 21.2 million dollars. A humanoid doll in question, designed as a companion to a young orphan girl, takes on a creepy life of her own
Universal’s family-oriented “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” an animated “Shrek” spinoff, again placed third, taking in 17.3 million dollars.
Fourth place went to “The Man Called Otto,” at 15 million dollars. The Sony film, a feel-good adaptation of the Swedish novel “A Man Called Ove,” stars Tom Hanks as a world-class curmudgeon forced to deal with some caring neighbors.
And in the fifth was a new Lionsgate release, action-thriller “Plane,” at 11.6 million dollars. Gerard Butler stars as a pilot who has to work with a convicted killer (played by Mike Colter) to protect passengers after a plane crash-lands in a remote Philippine jungle controlled by militias.
