Avatar: The Way of Water splashes Spider-Man: No Way Home in box office charts as it nears $2bn gross

James Cameron may soon be responsible for three of the five highest-grossing movies of all time

Avatar: The Way of the Water is passing milestone after milestone on its quest for box office dominance.

As of Wednesday (18 January), the James Cameron sequel has amassed $1.928bn (£1.56bn) globally, overtaking the Tom Holland-led Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.91bn/£1.55bn) as the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time.

Only five films have surpassed the $2bn mark, as Way of the Water looks set to do: Avengers: Infinity War ($2.04bn/£1.65bn), Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($2.069bn/£1.68bn), Titanic ($2.2bn/£1.78bn), Avengers: Endgame ($2.79bn/£2.26bn), and the first Avatar movie ($2.9bn/£2.35bn).

This of course means that if Way of the Water overtakes Infinity War, Cameron will be responsible for three of the five highest-grossing movies of all time.

Cameron has been open about the pressure on the Avatar sequel to be a box office smash as he has three more sequels in the works.

While the director claimed that the film needed to become the fifth highest-grossing film of all time to break even, Variety reported that he was embellishing and that the release would begin to make a profit once it hit an international gross of $1.5bn (£1.264bn).

Scenes from ‘Avatar: The Way of the Water’ (left) and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ (20th Century Studios/Disney)

At the Golden Globe Awards last week, Cameron called for an end to streaming services.

When asked about his films’s financial success, the director told Variety he “doesn’t look at it in those terms”.

Cameron said he is just happy that people want to be back in cinemas, stating: “Enough of the streaming already. I’m tired of sitting on my a**.”

He added: “As a society, we need to go to the cinema.”

Cameron went on to lose the Golden Globe for Best Director to Steven Spielberg, who won for his biographical film The Fabelmans.