‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ opens with a record number of screens in Spain and monopoly sessions in the United States.

The wait was long, but it’s finally over. ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ is already in theaters, 13 years after the original film and after an extensive shooting that also included the third installment, scheduled for a late 2024. James Cameron returns to direct an impressive d action, again using the latest digital technology. ‘The Sense of Water’ is the last major blockbuster of 2022 and promises to revive a box office that has been in the doldrums for months. The pressure is very high, but so is the trust, as evidenced by the number of screens on which the film will be shown starting today, December 16th.

As reported by the EFE Agency, ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ will be available on 1,983 screens in 416 cinemas in Spain. With this figure, the film scores the record for the first with the highest number of screens in the history of our country. The sequel to the highest-grossing film in history, which runs 3 hours and 10 minutes, will be available in IMAX 3D, 4DX, SCREEN X, ICE, DOLBY VISION 3D and ATMOS, and is expected to have a huge opening, with more than 150,000 admissions already sold, of which 70% in 3D format.

In the United States, ‘The Sense of Water’ opens in 4,202 theaters (source: The Numbers), a huge number, albeit less than the premiere of ‘Avengers: Endgame’, which opened in 4,662 theaters. By comparison, the original “Avatar” opened 13 years ago in 3,452 North American theaters. In other words, we are undoubtedly facing the film event of the year and this is reflected in the trust that distributors have placed in it.

This, of course, does not come without his dose of critical reflection on the current situation of cinema and the monopoly of Hollywood and Disney (remember that “The Sense of Water” is a production of 20th Century Studios, which is owned by Disney) . Specifically, the case of a New York movie theater, which scheduled up to 50 showings of the film in a single day. We are talking about the AMC Empire, located in the iconic Times Square in Manhattan, in New York, where the film is screened in various formats (IMAX, Dolby, RealD 3D), from midnight on Thursday 15 December and throughout the following day ( by squeezing the screen). 24 hours in which Cameron’s film will be projected continuously on fifty screens. Crazy.

First results at the box office

Although it has only been in theaters for a few hours, we already have the first box office figures for “Avatar: The Sense of Water”. According to data from Variety, the blockbuster fetched $15.8 million on its first day in 15 international markets, with particularly strong openings in Korea (3.3 million), France (2.9), Germany (2.5) and Italy (1.6). An important fact that will make the difference from recent Disney releases is that the sequel to ‘Avatar’ comes out in China (unlike ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ or ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’). In its previous screenings in the Asian juggernaut, the film raised $2.6m and there is expected to be a huge result (recall that the original was a phenomenon in China, with $261m raised in total).

Current forecasts place the first weekend of ‘Avatar: The Sense of Water’ at 250-350 million dollars in the international market and 150-175 million in the United States. Of course, these figures are speculative. We’ll have to wait until Sunday to find out if it falls below or exceeds them, but there’s no doubt that ‘Avatar’ will dominate the holiday season.