After a record-shattering final weekend of 2025, 2026 has kicked off in style with a €10.25 million haul from the 2nd to the 4th of January, according to Comscore data – the highest-grossing opening weekend since 2016.
Compared to the first weekend of last year, the figures have leapt by 55% – a feat that seemed almost impossible to achieve. Much of this can be put down to ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash‘, which, in its third weekend, raked in an extra €3.86 million with a drop of just 28% considering it’s a film that clocks in at over three hours long.
The total now already stands at over €22.5 million, and while reaching the €50 million mark of ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ seems like a long shot, in a few days, ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ will become the highest-grossing film of 2025 in Spain. The next goal should be to crack the top 10 of all-time highest-grossing films in our country (‘Barbie’ is tenth with €33.58 million).
We said it before – much of the success of this record-breaking weekend is down to ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’, but ‘The Housemaid‘ is right up there too, smashing it with a €2.12 million debut and a healthy average of €6,654 per cinema. These are excellent figures for the film adaptation of the famous novel by Freida McFadden, and it’s performing just as well worldwide.
‘Zootopia 2‘ also deserves a fair amount of credit, having perfectly timed its release to catch the last of the Christmas holidays. In its sixth week at the box office, the animated sequel is still raking in over a million euros (€1.19 million) and experiencing a tiny drop of just 16%. It will likely start to feel the pinch of the kids going back to school next weekend, but by then, it should already be over 16 million euros, leaving Disney classics like ‘Frozen’ in its wake.
In fourth place is the first Spanish release to crack the top 10, ‘Abuela tremenda‘ – which earned a tidy €733,430. That amount would have placed it top in many other weeks. As the days go by, the film starring Elena Irureta and Toni Acosta is the first Spanish film of the year to make it over one million euros, and it’s done it a little earlier than usual.
Fifth in the rankings is ‘SpongeBob SquarePants: A Pirate’s Adventure‘ (€391,956), which, like ‘Zootopia 2’, has been well received in theatres thanks to the timing – it’s been the perfect little holiday treat. Would it have been able to make 1.5 million euros in just two weeks if it had been released in a different month?
That’s followed by ‘Rondallas‘ – the other Spanish release that’s been flying under the radar a bit, but still managed to bank €339,529. The good reviews and the subject matter will help it build on its earnings during the week, particularly on Senior Tuesday.
As we figured out before, it all makes sense when you consider Christmas and the general public’s taste for movies right now. That’s the only way to explain how the ‘SpongeBob’ movie somehow manages to outsell ‘Anaconda‘ in the end, even though they both came out around the same time. But, to be honest, Sony might not be entirely thrilled with the way things are playing out – their film takes a pretty massive 47% hit in its second week and lands way down in seventh place with €306,553.
The launch of ‘The Physician 2‘ didn’t live up to the hype. This sequel to ‘The Physician’ – which, let’s not forget, was a real winner back in 2013 in Spain with a total of 7 million euros – has been quietly limping along with a pretty dismal €248,329 in its opening weekend. Maybe that 13 year gap between films was a problem.
Meanwhile, ‘Nuremberg‘ is starting to show signs it’s not as strong as it once was, slipping to ninth place with €204,682 after six weeks – but don’t be fooled, DeAPlaneta’s still pretty happy with the €3.5 million they’ve raked in so far.
And in tenth place it is ‘The King of Kings‘, which yet again drops by 39% in its fourth and probably final appearance in the top 10, churning up another €142,286 to take its total to €1.21 million.
These are the new films coming out on Friday that arent likely to knock ‘Avatar’ off its perch – ‘Nouvelle Vague’, ‘Rental Family’, ‘Song Sung Blue’, ‘The Chronology of Water’, and ‘Mission Santa’ are all pretty decent movies, but none of them seem to have the charm to get people to leave Pandora alone for another weekend.
Source: Ecartelara
