ALBAWABA - The James Cameron megahit "Avatar: Fire and Ash" will be up against Chris Pratt's sci-fi movie "Mercy" at the weekend box office.
"Mercy" wants to make between $10 million and $13 million over the weekend from 3,400 screens in North America. The sixth installment of "Avatar" aims to earn between $8 million and $10 million. It has spent five weeks at the top of the domestic charts.
"Mercy" is the only big new movie coming out this weekend. It's also Amazon MGM's first big release of the year. Over the next 11 months, the company plans to release more movies in theaters, including "Project Hail Mary" with Ryan Gosling, "Masters of the Universe" based on toys, and "Verity" based on the book by Colleen Hoover. The grade for this movie is PG-13, and it cost $60 million to make before marketing costs around the world were added in. "Mercy," directed by Timur Bekmambetov, takes place in the near future, where a detective (Pratt) is on trial for killing his wife. His fate will be decided by a powerful AI judge named Rebecca Ferguson.
The first two "Avatar" movies were No. 1 at the box office for seven weekends in a row, which shows how well they do over time. Will that record be broken on the third trip to Pandora? "Avatar: Fire and Ash" has made $368 million in North America and $1.32 billion around the world so far. It is the second-highest-grossing movie of 2025, after "Zootopia 2," which made $394 million in North America and $1.7 billion around the world. Still, "Avatar 3" isn't even close to the box office success of "Avatar" (2009) and "Avatar: The Way of Water" (2022), which are still two of the biggest movies of all time with $2.9 billion and $2.3 billion, respectively.
January is usually a slow month at the movies, but Comscore says that the year-to-date box office is 18% ahead of 2025. Since last year's home total wasn't as high as expected, movie theater owners are hoping that the momentum stays strong. Upcoming blockbusters include "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie," "The Odyssey" by Christopher Nolan, and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day."
David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting company Franchise Entertainment Research, says, "2026 got off to a good start thanks to strong holdover business." But, he says, "The box office is slowing down now that the kids are back in school and the holiday movies are coming to an end." We do not want a slump to happen.
