Can Spider-Man become cinema's first $3 billion film? Only seven films have passed $2 billion in the box office

Dubai: Sixty-four films have crossed a billion dollars. Seven have doubled it.

None has ever reached three billion, and only one has come genuinely close. Avatar has been sitting roughly $80 million short of the line for years, and two separate re-releases have not been enough to close it.

The seven

1. Avatar (2009): $2.92 billion 

2. Avengers: Endgame (2019): $2.80 billion 

3. Avatar: The Way of Water (2022): $2.33 billion 

4. Titanic (1997): $2.26 billion 

5. Ne Zha 2 (2025): $2.26 billion 

6. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015): $2.07 billion 

7. Avengers: Infinity War (2018): $2.05 billion

Breakdown of the list

One name dominates it. James Cameron directed Titanic and every Avatar film, which leaves him with three of the four highest-grossing films ever made.

Add Fire and Ash and he has four billion-dollar films in total, though the third Avatar did not join this particular club.

The top spot has changed hands twice. Avatar held it for nearly a decade, lost it to Endgame in 2019, then took it back after a re-release in China in 2021.

Ne Zha 2 is the most remarkable entry. It reached $2.26 billion almost entirely on Chinese domestic ticket sales, without needing the global rollout every other film here depended on.

So why has nothing reached $3 billion

Three reasons.

The first is that Avatar's total is not a normal theatrical run. It is an original release plus two re-releases stretched across more than a decade, and it still fell short. If that is what $2.92 billion takes, $3 billion in a single run is a considerable ask.

The second is that the theatrical audience is smaller than it was. Endgame's $2.8 billion came in 2019, the last year before streaming permanently rearranged how people watch films. Nothing since has matched it, and 2026 is the first year in some time to produce more than three billion-dollar films.

The third is the ceiling on how much any one market can contribute. A film needs China, and China has increasingly favoured its own productions, which is precisely how Ne Zha 2 got where it did.

What might get there

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is the obvious candidate right now. It reached a billion dollars in six days, second only to Endgame, and is still climbing.

Whether it doubles that depends entirely on how it holds over the coming weeks rather than on anything it has already done. No Way Home managed $1.9 billion and did not quite make this list.

Avengers: Doomsday arrives in December, and every previous Avengers film has cleared a billion. Dune: Part Three opens the same day, which may cost both of them.

The one that was supposed to join

Avatar: Fire and Ash is the interesting absence.

It crossed a billion dollars after 18 days, slower than The Way of Water at 14 and the original at 17, and analysts spent January debating whether it had the legs to reach $2 billion like its predecessors.

It did not. The film finished at around $1.48 billion, which is an enormous figure for almost any other franchise and a shortfall for this one. The first Avatar took $2.1 billion from overseas markets alone and the sequel took $1.65 billion internationally. Fire and Ash managed $1.07 billion.

Cameron remains the only director with more than one film on the $2 billion list. He is also, for the first time, the director of an Avatar film that did not get there.