Well, it's been a few weeks, figured I'd look at this film's box office again and see how it stacks up to the first film. Once again, I'll mostly stick to domestic box office, since there's more data available for comparison.
Avatar 1 (2009) was #1 in the domestic box office for 7 weeks, finally dropping to #2 in week 8.
Avatar 2 (2022) was also #1 for 7 weeks, then fell to #3 in week 8.
Avatar 1 had a domestic box office of $637 million as of week 8. Total international box office was a bit shy of $2 billion.
Avatar 2 has a domestic box office of $640 million as of week 8. Total international box office so far is about $1.57 billion.
So Avatar 2 appears to be doing very similarly to the first film, thus far. However, Avatar 1's numbers are in 2009 dollars. If we adjust for inflation, Avatar 1's domestic box office at this point would be roughly $888 million, which means Avatar 2 is actually about a quarter of a billion dollars lower domestically than Avatar 1. Despite having basically zero competition over the last 8 weeks, and around 800 additional theaters for most of that time. Given that its daily totals are now falling below $1 million, it's questionable it'll reach $700 million.
Internationally, Avatar 2 is about $425 million behind the first film, but again, that's not taking inflation into account. If we take inflation into account, Avatar 1's international box office was over $2.70 billion, more than a billion beyond Avatar 2's current $1.57 billion international box office. Again, it's questionable it can make up another billion dollars at this point.
For further comparison, Top Gun: Maverick was at $625 million domestically in week 8, and Spider-Man: No Way Home was at $751 million. Which means that Avatar 2 is only slightly outperforming TG:M and is well behind NWH at this point in their respective runs, at least domestically.
Also, Avatar 1 sold a total of 98.7 million tickets in it's original domestic run (though tickets were $2 cheaper in 2009), Avatar 2 is a little over 70.5 million tickets so far. And TG:M and NWH sold 78.4 million and 88.3 million tickets, respectively. The Phantom Menace sold 85 million, The Force Awakens 88 million, Avengers: Endgame 94 million, and finally, Cameron's Titanic (1997) sold about 130 million tickets domestically.