In the biggest, most shocking box office comeback of all time, the 2009 movie Avatar returned to theaters in China Friday and took back its highest-grossing crown from 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.
That’s right — the movie about blue aliens living on a lushly vegetative moon with a nearly unobtainable mineral called unobtanium reemerged to beat out the magnum opus of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Avatar write and director James Cameron acknowledged the feat on Twitter Saturday, replying to a message of congratulations from Marvel Studios.
Before the re-release of Avatar, both movies had made over $2.7 billion at the box office globally. Avengers: Endgame held its lead by less than $8 million.
By Saturday night in China, Avatar had earned an estimated $8.9 million to take the lead as the highest grossing movie globally of all time. It’s expected to continue widening that thin gap with projected earnings of around $58 million for its current theatrical run, Deadline reported.
Now, these numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation. If we did that, 1939’s Gone with the Wind would still retain its title.
This surely won’t be the end of the box office battle between these two titanic movies. The folks behind the Marvel movies could very well re-release Endgame, perhaps as a lead up to the next era of Marvel on the big screen. This could be a war that lasts for years.
At the end of the day though, both properties are owned by Disney, so is it really that much of a competition? Perhaps between the individual producers or directors, if they care that much, but either way Disney wins.
Even the third highest-grossing movie of all time, Titanic, is a Cameron project just like Avatar. If that movie were re-released, it would just be a Cameron movie beating a Cameron movie. We’d have to stretch back to the no. 6 movie, Jurassic World, if we wanted something out of the Disney and Cameron canons to take the lead. But who really wants to live on a planet where Jurassic World is the highest-grossing movie ever?