With Christmas Day releases hitting theaters Thursday, the holiday box office looks set for a second straight win by Avatar: Fire and Ash, with tracking projections clustering in the mid-$70 million range for the four-day frame and about $60 million for Friday through Sunday. The film opened last weekend with about $89 million in North America and roughly $345 million worldwide on studio estimates, giving James Cameron’s franchise its usual premium-format momentum heading into the year’s busiest corridor.
The fresh challengers target three very different crowds. Sony’s Anaconda sells itself as a star-driven studio comedy with Jack Black and Paul Rudd. A24 expands Marty Supreme, led by Timothée Chalamet, after a buzzy platform start. Focus Features rolls out Song Sung Blue, a music-driven drama starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson that aims for adult audiences looking for something softer than franchise spectacle.
Forecasts disagree sharply on how those newcomers stack up after Thursday. Box Office Theory’s model puts Marty Supreme at about $17.9 million across the four days, with Song Sung Blue and Anaconda each hovering near $11 million, while keeping Avatar: Fire and Ash near $80.4 million for the same period. Earlier long-range tracking pegged Anaconda significantly higher, in the $20 million to $30 million range for a traditional three-day opening, a gap that underscores how volatile Christmas comps can be once walk-up behavior and screen allocations come into view.
Mario Supreme enters wide release with a concrete signal of demand: it grossed $875,000 from six theaters last weekend, translating to a $145,000 per-theater average that ranked as the year’s top platform debut and a high-water mark for A24. Tracking analysts expect Chalamet’s draw and awards-season visibility to help it hold attention after the holiday rush, even if family titles dominate premium screens.
