“Avatar: The Way of Water” -- made more waves with another $38.5 million in North American theatrical box-office sales for the most recent four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend, according to Comscore.

That puts the Walt Disney/20th Fox Studios hit now at five weeks with $570.3 million in total U.S. box-office revenue.

Globally, the movie is now at $1.89 billion, placing it in seventh place for movie box-office revenue for all time. Number one is the original “Avatar" (2009) at $2.9 billion.

On key metric for “Avatar" is its continued strength in average box-office revenue per location -- a massive $7,693 per location for the most recent weekend. Total locations are still wide-reaching at 4,045.

In more good news for the movie industry, the four movies behind “Avatar” this past weekend -- “M3GAN” ($17.9 million), “Puss In Boots: The Last Wish” ($13.4 million), “A Man Called Otto” ($12.7 million), and “Plane”($10.0 million) -- all posted strong $10 million-plus box-office revenue for domestic theaters.

The top 10 movies had an estimated weekend gross of $100 million. Through the first two weeks of the new year, the movie box-office continues to improve -- now at $352 million, 44% higher than 2022 and more than ten times that of the pandemic-disrupted 2021 year.

Still, the movie business is 28% behind the pre-pandemic year of 2019, which had a season-to-date revenue of $442.0 million, according to IMdb Box Office Mojo.

Even with its big success, “Avatar” continues to spend well on national TV -- $3.03 million for the most recent two-week period, according to estimates from iSpot.tv.

Now some six months after it aired its first TV commercial, total national TV spend for "Avatar" is now at $34 million from 8,294 commercial airings, resulting in 2.2 billion impressions. The bulk of those impressions -- 436 million -- came from NFL football, college football, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

Looking forward for movies yet to open, Disney/Marvel’s “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” (opening February 17) has bought $6.4 million worth of TV exposure in the past two weeks -- much of this coming expensive college football playoff game inventory.

Two other wide releases on the way are also ramping up national TV advertising: Paramount Pictures’ “80 For Brady” at $4.9 million (February 3 debut) and Universal Pictures’ “Knock at the Cabin” at $4.5 million (also debuting on February 3).

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