Avatar will reclaim its all-time box office record with a Chi­nese re-release

There’s a war being waged between two titans locked in a bit­ter rival­ry, and no, we’re not refer­ring to the bur­geon­ing feud between Godzil­la and King Kong. For years, Avatar held the title of the all-time high­est-gross­ing movie with a whop­ping sum of $2.790 bil­lion, only to be dethroned in 2019 by Avengers: Endgame and its $2.797 bil­lion take. Soon, how­ev­er, the scales may shift.

The Hol­ly­wood Reporter has today con­firmed that Avatar will be re-released in Chi­na this com­ing Fri­day, with offi­cial approval from the Chi­nese Film Board now secured. Open­ing wide across the nation in both IMAX 3D, nor­mal 3D, and 2D ver­sions, it could be a resus­ci­tat­ing force to an exhi­bi­tion indus­try slowed by the pandemic.

More to the point, it will almost def­i­nite­ly return Avatar to the num­ber-one spot, with only a mea­ger $7.4 mil­lion required to boost James Cameron​‘s saga of big blue peo­ple and space min­ers over Marvel’s super­hero posse cut. Shouldn’t be dif­fi­cult for the film that gen­er­at­ed a hefty $202.6 mil­lion in its ini­tial run, and that was back in 2009, when Chi­na still trailed Japan as the third-largest movie mar­ket on the planet.

Cameron’s still hard at work on the expan­sive series of sequels to his block­bust­ing sci-fi opus and last com­plet­ed fea­ture, with the sec­ond install­ment oh-so-ten­ta­tive­ly slat­ed for 16 Decem­ber, 2022. Pho­tog­ra­phy was announced as com­plete back in Sep­tem­ber, so maybe this time it will real­ly hap­pen, though slow work­er Cameron has yanked the foot­ball away from the view­ing pub­lic on a few occa­sions in the past.

In the end, this back-and-forth between imag­ined neme­ses Avatar and Avenger doesn’t count for much, as both prop­er­ties are now owned by Dis­ney, since their acqui­si­tion of Fox in 2019. No mat­ter who comes out on top, the true win­ner will be the Mouse.