How 'Star Wars 8' Could 'Lose' Against 'Avatar 2'

There is a part of me that just wanted to be obnoxiously giddy about the notion of Star Wars Episode 8 opening within a week of Avatar 2 in December of 2017. I was initially tempted to throw on ”The Burning Heart” from Rocky IV as I tapped out this post, but that would presume I’m picking a side. Walt Disney made the smart play yesterday and moved Rian Johnson’s next Star Wars movie from Memorial Day 2017 to December 15, 2017. I discussed an hour ago why that was the best possible choice for all parties, so I won’t rehash that here. And the fun part of the date change is that it potentially created a situation where Star Wars Episode VIII would open just a week prior to James Cameron’s Avatar. If that happens, the would-be “winner” may not be the one you’re presuming.
Now said 20th Century Fox sequel hasn’t been officially slated, and depending on who you ask it was either supposed to open on the 15th or on Christmas weekend of 2017 presuming James Cameron got the film done in time. That’s not a guarantee, as Cameron has been tinkering with the screenplays for his next few Avatar films for half-a-decade. But let’s assume James Cameron is able to do what needs to be done in time and he and Fox refuse to find safer waters. Then we have a situation where the biggest “wholly original” cinematic franchise of all time goes head-to-head with the last great “wholly original” cinematic franchise.
So presuming this plays out like Alice Through the Looking Glass versus X-Men: Apocalypse, as opposed to the never consummated Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice versus Captain America: Civil War battle, who wins such a showdown?  Well, on a global scale, especially outside of America, my money is still on Avatar.
First of all, if this needs to be said, there need not be explicit winners and losers in a given match-up if both films are big hits, and there is a reason I put quote marks around “loses” in the headline above. To quote the Sisters ad campaign, #YouCanSeeThemBoth  (or should that be “I see you both”?) during the holiday stretch between their respective opening weekends and whenever they leave theaters. If they both end up being good-to-great, then all the merrier. But while Star Wars: The Force Awakens is by far the biggest-grossing film of all time in America, with a likely $925 million final total in the cards compared to Avatar‘s $760.5m domestic cume, it’s not even a contest overseas. Avatar is still far-and-away the biggest grossing movie of all time worldwide.
As of this writing, with Star Wars winding down around the world, it looks like J.J. Abrams’s sci-fi sequel will end up just over/under $2 billion worldwide. It may or may not best the $2.1 million global total of James Cameron’s Titanic but the $2.788b total of Avatar is just too far away. And its overseas total is probably going to be over/under $1.3 billion, #3 on said list and behind Titanic ($1.5b overseas) and Avatar ($2b overseas alone). Okay, so Avatar remains the overseas and worldwide box office champion of the world while Star Wars utterly dominates America.

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That’s rather appropriate since Star Wars is and was a uniquely American myth and there is no law saying everyone all over the world has to embrace it as we’ve embraced it. But looking over the comparisons between Avatar and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the numbers are loud and clear. In almost every single overseas territory where Avatar and Star Wars: The Force Awakens both played, the James Cameron movie made more. Here is a sampling of the respective overseas totals, not accounting for the expansion of the marketplace (yay, Avatar!) or overseas currency deflation (yay, Star Wars!) over the last few years:
Australia: $105m vs. $60m
Brazil: $58m vs. $26m
China: $204m vs. $103m (and counting)
France: $175m vs. $80m
Germany: $162m vs. $100m
Hong Kong: $22.9m vs. $10.7m
India: $24m vs. $4m
Japan: $171m vs. $100m
Mexico: $44m vs. $14m
Poland: $28m vs. $15m
Russia: $117m vs. $25m
South Korea: $105m
Switzerland: $15.7m vs. $11.5m
United Kingdom: $150m vs. $165m
Venezuela: $5m vs. $17m
That isn’t to say that The Force Awakens did poorly in these territories. We’re still talking about the third or fourth biggest overseas grosser of all time, during a period where overseas currency has been weakened by a strong dollar. But in terms of comparing the respective overseas runs of those two blockbuster titans, there are only a handful of territories big or small where The Force Awakens made even a little bit more than Avatar. For most of the territories big and small, it wasn’t even close.
There are reasons for this, specifically the world’s embrace of Cameron’s pioneering 3D craftsmanship, the appeal of visiting Pandora again and again, and the primal “indigenous people rise up and beat back western imperial conquerors” narrative being both potent and topical around the world as the post-9/11 “War on Terror” campaign was in full swing. And the end of the day, for much of the world that hasn’t spent the last 35 years devouring Star Wars-related pop culture, The Force Awakens was just another high quality sci-fi fantasy blockbuster in a sea of such fare.
Without the nostalgic attachment to the world, nor any kind of specifically domestic desire to “avenge” the artistic failings of the Prequels, The Force Awakens is either a somewhat conventional sci-fi blockbuster that feels like a riff on classic Hero’s Journey fables or a loose remake of that first Star Wars film you saw awhile back in one form or another. And again, that’s okay. Star Wars is our fairy tale and any “first installment of a new trilogy/franchise reboot that earns $925 million domestic off a $200m+ production budget and restores the faith of the fandom in a given property is doing fine whether or not it becomes kind of the global box office as well.
But in terms of placing bets on which film comes out victorious, the fact remains that Avatar 2 would have to take a massive dive in global grosses while Star Wars: Episode 8 would have to seriously improve its overseas profile in two years for them to either somewhat tie each other or for the Jedi to come out on top outside of America. Now both of those are plausible possibilities, as Disney will surely focus on overseas box office next time out (since America is fully on-board) while we have only theories in regards to how the rest of the world will react to a second Avatar movie eight years after the first one.
I wrote a much-shared piece in December of 2014 about how Avatar earned a whopping $2.788 billion at the worldwide box office and then was mostly forgotten (or consigned to ridicule) on the pop culture landscape. Sometimes I wonder if that post is going to be “the one” I’m remembered for, but I digress. To be fair that was mainly in regards to American audiences. It is entirely possible that the rest of the world will embrace Avatar 2 as “their franchise” in the same way we embraced Star Wars as our defining cinematic series.
While I’m not sitting here proclaiming that a theoretical Avatar 2 will do the same obscene business as the first one did whenever it does open, nor am I so quick to assume that audiences here and abroad will forsake it the second time out as if it’s a classic “unasked for sequel” in the vein of Ted 2. The pessimist thinking is that Avatar was a “right movie at the right time” fluke and that a sequel won’t be remotely as well-embraced nearly a decade later. And that may be true. But it’s just as likely that the rest of the world may well embrace the return of Avatar eight years later to as much of an extent as we Americans embraced the return of Star Wars ten years after Revenge of the Sith.
With the all-important notion that just because Star Wars 8 and Avatar 2 end up opening close to each other in America doesn’t mean their respective overseas openings don’t get spaced out a bit, in order for Star Wars 8 to play better overseas than Avatar 2 then the Star Wars film would have to play like an Avatar movie while Avatar 2 would have to perform like a Star Wars sequel. And as of this juncture, I still have to argue that Avatar 2 has the advantage outside of America if only by virtue of the original film being something of a leggy “by popular demand/word of mouth” box office triumph here and abroad.
If Avatar 2 is embraced in any number of overseas territories (like China for example) as the return of “their” franchise in a manner similar to how Star Wars: The Force Awakens was treated as a the return of “our” franchise last month, well, then watch out. That’s speculative, but it’s not implausible.
There are any number of reasons to presume that these two titans won’t go head-to-head. James Cameron and 20th Century Fox could just adjust their plans and drop Avatar 2 on December 14, 2018 with his next three installments dropping every other December so as to alternate with new Star Wars “episodes.” That would actually be the best case scenario for both parties, and again it means we moviegoers win every single December indefinitely. And considering Walt Disney is still allegedly plotting “Avatar Land,” it is in their interest for Avatar 2 to reignite interest and passions in the franchise as well.
But if a head-to-head showdown does happen at the end of 2017, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Star Wars dominate in America while Avatar kicks a little bit more butt overseas. So in that sense, they both win.
No matter when they open, I am firmly rooting for both films to do whatever they need to do to qualify as hits.
I remain a Star Wars fan despite the fact that I liked The Force Awakens a little less than you, and I too look forward to seeing the further adventures of Rey, Finn, and Poe as we get more face time for Mark Hamill. And I loved Avatar back in 2009 and still love it today, treasuring it as presumably the very last mega-budget original franchise fantasy that wasn’t preordained to be a franchise and didn’t need a mega-huge opening weekend to wrack up mega-huge worldwide grosses. And if James Cameron assures me that Avatar 2 will make me “shit myself with my mouth wide open,” then I come to the theater with an extra pair of undies.
Both franchises, decades apart, are vital specifically due to the fact that they are “cinema first” franchises. They weren’t based on a book, a cartoon, a play, a television show, or a comic book. They were wholly “built from scratch” cinematic adventures that captured the imagination of the whole world. It would be oddly appropriate to see them go head-to-head and both triumph accordingly, a sign that there is value in spending the time and money to at least try to create wholly new worlds now and then. So who wins in a Star Wars Episode 8 v Avatar 2 showdown?  We do.