Avatar: The Way of Water is the fourth highest grossing movie of all time
James Cameron has directed three out of four of the highest grossing movies ever
Avatar: The Way of Water has overtaken Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the fourth highest grossing movie of all time – and it looks on track to overtake Titanic, too.
The Avatar sequel is currently at $2.117 billion, which beats The Force Awakens' $2.071 billion (without adjusting for inflation), per The Hollywood Reporter. That makes The Way of Water the fourth biggest movie of all time – and it has another Cameron blockbuster, Titanic, firmly in its sights.
Titanic is currently sitting at $2.187 billion at the box office, which means The Way of Water doesn't have far to go to climb above it to third place. Plus, though Titanic is coming back to theaters this February to celebrate its 25th anniversary, per THR's report, box office experts still expect The Way of Water to overtake the film.
The second highest grossing film of all time is Avengers: Endgame, which has $2.79 billion to date. The Way of Water, then, has to add around $680 million to take second place (behind Avatar's $2.92 billion) – but whatever happens, Cameron has three out of four of the highest grossing movies of all time.
The Way of Water has only been in theaters for just over a month, which makes its storm up the all time chart seriously impressive, especially considering its opening weekend came in below predictions. The sequel has topped the box office for the seventh weekend in a row and doesn't have any blockbuster competition (barring Titanic) until Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania releases this February 17.
Avatar 2 has also enjoyed success at the 2023 Oscars nominations, scoring in four categories, including Best Picture.
If you're up to date on The Way of Water, check out our guide to all of 2023's most exciting movie release dates to get planning the year's theater trips.
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I'm a Senior Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.