Avatar: The Way of Water had its first full day of play today in China, where it grossed an estimated $18.5, million Along with $5 million from Wednesday/Thursday previews, which lifts the total in that market to $23.5M through Friday.

China, According to Deadine has been a gamble for this film. There are clearly issues in the market that just reared their ugly heads after a long-lasting and internationally scrutinized Zero-Covid policy. While pre-sales of tickets were strong, unfortunately for the big blue sequel, walk-in screenings have not been so fruitful, and it is unlikely that Avatar 2 will reach $100M in its opening weekend owing to this. Early social scores are strong withMaoyan at 9.3, TPP at 9.2, and Douban 8.4. for those who are not aware, the social credit score is a way that the Chinese government and Chinese companies use to rate citizens trustworthiness, and behavior, to rank them as upstanding citizens or not. It is essentially a credit score, but for every aspect of life, even the entertainment China imports must be run through corporate ranking systems. If the film doesn’t meet a certain score, the film won’t be shown in the country.