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Box Office: Can Avatar Fire and Ash surpass Ne Zha 2 to emerge 2025's highest grossing movie worldwide?
Ne Zha 2 leads 2025's box office with USD 2.1B, but Avatar: Fire and Ash eyes the crown with its global appeal and holiday window advantage. Can it surpass the Chinese hit?
The battle for the box office crown was never as intense as it is this year. With Ne Zha 2 currently dominating the theatrical business across the globe, fans cannot help but be curious about the prospect of Avatar: Fire and Ash surpassing it to become the most successful venture of 2025. We break down the possibilities below.
Released on January 29, 2025, Ne Zha 2 roared into Chinese cinemas during Lunar New Year and quickly exceeded expectations. Directed by Jiaozi and based on Chinese mythology and the 16th-century novel Investiture of the Gods, the animated fantasy film has grossed more than USD 2.1 billion worldwide as of this writing.
Made on a modest production budget of USD 80 million, it now holds multiple records: the highest-grossing film of the year, the highest-grossing animated feature ever, the most successful non-English language film ever, and the fifth-highest-grossing film in history. The latter chart, for the record, consists of two Avatar films in the top three.
Avatar 3, officially known by the aforementioned name, arrives in theaters on December 19. If the next installment in James Cameron’s epic sci-fi saga follows in the footsteps of its predecessors—Avatar (2009) earned USD 2.9 billion and Avatar: The Way of Water collected USD 2.3 billion—it will have no problem outpacing the Chinese juggernaut.
Returning cast members in Fire and Ash include Sam Worthington, Zoë Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, and Kate Winslet. New additions are David Thewlis and Oona Chaplin.
The film is rumored to have an extended production time, and the cutting-edge technology used in the making is a well-known piece of information. Fans are aware that Avatar 3 will be no less of a spectacle than the first two films in the series.
While Ne Zha 2 had a head start at the box office, arriving in the very first month of 2025, Avatar: Fire and Ash will have the holiday release window to capitalize on. The former film is notably popular mostly among domestic audiences, which is contrary to the international appeal of Avatar—a factor that further improves its chances of taking the top spot on the box office chart when experts are done crafting it early next year.
Meanwhile, other 2025 entries whose box office runs are worth monitoring are Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning, Zootopia 2, Superman, Wicked 2, and more.
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