Tom Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” easily took on “Jurassic World,” “Minions,” and a trio of Marvel films. But in the end, it was no match for James Cameron.

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ topped ‘Maverick’s’ box office in just its first three weeks in theaters, raking in an astonishing $1.51 billion worldwide since Dec. 16, data shows. by Box Office Mojo.

That figure makes it the highest-grossing release of 2022 and helped it overtake 2015’s “Furious 7” to become the 10th-highest-grossing film of all time.

Box office watchers don’t expect “Avatar 2” to slow down anytime soon. The film has a clear lead to continue garnering ticket sales and should have a firm hold on IMAX, Dolby and other high-end display formats until “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is released. ” next month.

This is good news for Cameron, who, as the film’s release neared, claimed he would need to make at least $2 billion to break even. Along with the original “Avatar” ($2.92 billion) and “Titanic” ($2.2 billion), Cameron has now made three of the 10 biggest blockbusters of all time.

“I really wonder what kind of legs this is going to develop now that we’re not on vacation anymore,” Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com, told CNBC Make It. “The first movie just kept coming and going.”

“[James Cameron] built a career on movies that were slow-burning at the box office, and it’s really hitting theaters again with the sequel,” he adds.

The dominance of the “Avatar” box office was not a given from the start. The film’s opening weekend fell short of box office expectations, and winter storms that battered large swaths of the country also dented ratings.

The worldwide appetite for “Avatar 2” helped carry the film. While “Top Gun” grossed $718 million in the United States and $770 million overseas, $1.05 billion in ticket sales for “Avatar” came from overseas, American audiences contributing a relatively modest $464 million as of January 6.

“Avatar” doesn’t behave like a typical sequel either. Most sequels from major franchises normally see preloaded box office returns as fans rush to theaters on opening weekend and then drop rapidly week after week, but “Avatar” hasn’t seen a resounding resurgence. steep declines in its first three weeks.

“It behaves like something people didn’t see back then,” Robbins says. “There’s been a return to ‘Avatar’ in a way that makes it an original movie for a lot of people. They’re rediscovering the franchise through this sequel.”

Whether or not it will be able to match its predecessor and become the highest-grossing film ever made remains to be seen, but ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ performance so far makes the forecast $2 billion. of Cameron good.

“”When that first weekend may not have quite met some of the high-end expectations, he questioned whether he could make it happen,” Robbins says. “Now we’re there and c is over $1.5 billion and has a pretty healthy track to make up a lot more. So the odds are better than ever.”

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