'Avatar' marks 6 straight weeks at No. 1, crosses $2 billion

NEW YORK (AP) — James Cameron's “Avatar: The Way of Water” led ticket sales in movie theaters for the sixth straight weekend, making it the first film to have such a sustained

reign atop the box office since 2009's “Avatar." The Walt Disney Co.’s “The Way of Water” added $19.7 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters over the weekend, according to

studio estimates Sunday. Its global total has now surpassed $2 billion, putting it sixth all-time and just ahead of “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Domestically, “The Way of Water” is

up to $598 million. Continued robust international sales ($56.3 million for the weekend) has helped push the “Avatar” sequel to $2.024 billion worldwide. A year ago,

“Spider-Man: No Way Home” also topped the box office for six weekends, but did it over the course of seven weeks. You have to go back to Cameron's original “Avatar” to find a

movie that stayed No. 1 for such a long span. ("Avatar" ultimately topped out at seven weeks.) Before that, the only film in the past 25 years to manage the feat was another

Cameron film; “Titanic” (1997) went undefeated for 15 weeks. “The Way of Water” has now reached a target that Cameron himself set for the very expensive sequel. Ahead of

its release, Cameron said becoming “the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history” was “your break even."