Chris Pratt’s new sci‑fi thriller Mercy has finally knocked Avatar: Fire and Ash off the top of the box office after five straight weekends of Na’vi dominance, even as a brutal winter storm dragged down overall ticket sales. The Amazon MGM release opened to around 11–13 million dollars in North America, enough to edge out Cameron’s third Avatar film, which is settling into second place while crossing roughly 380 million dollars domestic.
Zootopia 2 is still quietly racking up money in third, having already passed 400 million dollars in the U.S. and roughly 1.7 billion worldwide, which makes Mercy’s win more about timing than a broader box‑office turnaround.
Mercy itself is a contained, 90‑minute near‑future thriller set in a dystopian Los Angeles, where an advanced AI judge gives defendants one shot to prove their innocence. Pratt plays detective Chris Raven, who suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of the system, accused of killing his wife and forced to lower his algorithmic “guilt probability” in real time before the AI court executes him.
Reviews have been mixed and audience scores middling, with some critics calling the film high‑concept but thin, yet it now has the marketing bragging rights of being the one that finally dethroned Avatar on its sixth weekend. For a breakdown of its opening numbers and how it stacks up against Avatar: Fire and Ash and Zootopia 2, see Variety’s box office report on Mercy’s debut weekend.
