Fire and Ash’ at the Weekend Box Office

After a five-weekend streak, the death grip that Avatar: Fire & Ash had on the box office has been broken. The third Avatar movie from James Cameron has slipped into second place, with around $7 million taken in over the weekend. The sci-fi thriller Mercy took the top spot with $11.2 million from North America and $22.8 million worldwide.

Mercy is set in the near future, when crime is on the rise in Los Angeles. Detective Christopher Raven (Chris Pratt) finds himself on trial not for his pulp novel-esque name but for murdering his wife (Annabelle Wallis). The judge overseeing his case is an AI played by Dune’s Rebecca Ferguson. Detective Raven has 90 minutes to prove his innocence before Judge Maddox executes him.

Mercy cost some $60 million to make, so even though it took the number one spot at the box office this past weekend there’s no guarantee it’ll actually make back that money over the long run, particularly when reviews have been pretty dismal. The North American take was depressed a bit by the winter storms currently tearing through the United States; it’s hard to get to the movie theater when the snow drifts are up to your knees. But Mercy also underperformed slightly abroad, where the weather isn’t currently an excuse.

‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ Disappointed Despite Breaking $1 Billion

As for Avatar: Fire & Ash, it’s time at the box office is finally petering out. Right now, it’s taken in $378 million dollars at the domestic box office and just over a billion abroad, for a grand total of $1.378 billion. That’s obviously a huge amount of money, but it’s well below the final take posted by the first Avatar movie from 2009 ($2.9 billion, the highest grossing movie of all time) and 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water ($2.3 billion, the third highest grossing movie of all time). Right now, Avatar: Fire and Ash is merely the nineteenth highest grossing movie of all time, which would be a huge feather in the cap of almost any film except one from this series, where it’s a bit of a disappointment.

The real Hollywood success story from 2025 is the animated family film Zootopia 2, which came in third place for the weekend and which has taken in some $1.7 billion worldwide. That makes it the ninth highest grossing movie of all time; expect it out on digital and Blu-ray soon. The sturdy thriller The Housemaid came in fourth place, followed by 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple to round out the top 5.

There aren’t a ton of exciting new movies coming out next weekend, so maybe Mercy can hang onto its spot at the top of the box office ladder, especially once the snow clears and people feel like going to the movies again. In the meantime, there are other great Rebecca Ferguson movies you can watch at home that are worth a look.