Two years ago, there were serious concerns about whether the global box office would ever recover from the pandemic.

Last year, "Spider-Man: No Home" and another James Bond adventure film, "Death Can Wait," gave a glimmer of hope that movie theaters really aren't a relic of the past.

However, it had to come 2022 with films like "Top Gun: Maverick", "Jurassic World: Reign" and "Avatar: The Nature of Water" for them to really restore their value to Hollywood, writes BTA.

Interestingly, for the first time in a long time, it wasn't just superheroes that kept the box office going.

In fact, until it was overtaken by Avatar: The Last Airbender, the top-grossing film of the year up until the very end was Top Gun: Maverick, a sequel to a production that premiered nearly four decades ago.

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Baz Luhrmann's brilliant Elvis biopic, the star-studded romantic comedy Ticket to Heaven with George Clooney and Julia Roberts, and the indie Michelle Yeoh's Everything Everywhere at Once proved that there was a real chance that a bold shake-up of the cinematic status quo would resonate with audiences. .

A little more than three weeks after its worldwide release, Avatar: The Last Airbender, another long-awaited sequel, is still a strong player on the international stage and continues to attract audiences to cinemas.

Overtaking "Top Gun: Maverick", director James Cameron's "Avatar: The Nature of Water" has become the highest-grossing film at the global box office in 2022.

By midweek, global ticket sales for the Twentieth Century Fox/Disney film had already topped $1.51 billion.

By comparison, after its May 2022 release, Paramount Pictures' Top Gun: Maverick has collected an impressive $1.49 billion worldwide.

Avatar: The Last Airbender is now the ninth highest-grossing film of all time and the second-highest-grossing movie of the pandemic era, behind Spider-Man: No Way Home, which earned $1.916 billion. .

In its opening weekend, Avatar: The Last Airbender, according to analysts, grossed $134 million from ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada and $435 million worldwide.

Forecasts before the film hit theaters indicated that the 13-year-awaited sequel to "Avatar" would make at least $140 million domestically and up to $500 million internationally in its debut weekend.

Some analysts even expected receipts in the range of $175 million from ticket sales for the film in the US and Canada.

"Avatar: The Nature of Water" caught up to become the year's fastest film to cross the $1 billion mark from worldwide ticket sales.