The weekend is almost over, meaning that the box office is almost wrapped up in how well movies did over the last few days. The complete numbers aren’t in yet for obvious reasons, but many are already projecting the winner, and not surprisingly, it’s Avatar: The Way Of Water. It being the #1 movie in the world was not something people doubted, but what was doubted was the initial projections that the film was expected to get. If you recall, many said the film could get over $175 million domestically. The initial results are in, and it didn’t make that, nor did it come close.

The total that is currently estimated is $134 million domestically. That’s a fantastic number that many blockbuster films would love to have in their opening weekends, but it is $41 million lower than the projections. However, there is a catch that must be noted. Mainly, Sunday isn’t over yet. So the projection considers the full numbers of Friday and Saturday viewers and then guesstimate what Sunday will be like. That’s why many box office projections get a tick upward by a few million at times when the full numbers from Sunday arrive.

Given that it’s not even halfway through Sunday at the time of this article being written, that means that there’s plenty of time for people to go see the film before the day is done. So we grant you that it won’t make the extra $41 million in that time, but it could bring the film closer to $140 million.

So why did the film not make its projections? It’s hard to say. The biggest theory will be the runtime of over three hours. The longer a film goes, the fewer showings you can have. That’s just math. So that could have been a factor.

Another factor is it’s been 13 years since the previous film, so the interest in it may not have been as powerful as it could’ve been had it come out sooner.

That being said, Avatar: The Way Of Water is still projected to make hundreds of millions from the overseas market, which hasn’t been tallied yet. Another thing that will help the film is the holiday season and people wanting to treat themselves to a film during this time. Additionally, it won’t have major competition for quite a while, so the box office drop-off for the film likely will be lower than many other films this year. Only time will tell.

Source: ComicBook.com