‘Avatar: Fire and Ash’ lights up box office with #1 debut
Zoe Saldaña stars as Neytiri in ‘Avatar: Fire and Ash.’ (20th Century Studios)
We see you, Avatar: Fire and Ash, at the top of the box office.
The third film in James Cameron‘s epic sci-fi series opens at #1 with an $88 million haul in its debut weekend, Box Office Mojo reports.
While certainly a good start, Avatar: Fire and Ash has a ways to go if it hopes to catch up to its predecessors. The 20th Century Studios franchise has spawned the highest and third-highest grossing films of all time in the original 2009 movie and its 2022 sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, respectively.
Coming in second at the weekend box office is the animated Bible adaptation David, which brought in just over $22 million. It was followed by two other new releases: The Housemaid, starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, took #3 with $18.95 million, and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, notched #4 with $16 million.
The Disney sequel Zootopia 2 added an extra $14.5 million to round out the top five.
Here are the top 10 films at the box office:
1. Avatar: Fire and Ash — $88 million 2. David — $22.017 million 3. The Housemaid — $18.95 million 4. The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants — $16 million 5. Zootopia 2 — $14.5 million 6. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 — $7.25 million 7. Wicked: For Good — $4.3 million 8. Marty Supreme — $875,000 9. Hamnet — $850,000 10. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t — $600,000
Disney is the parent company of 20th Century Studiosand ABC News.
Selena Gomez and David Henrie on the ‘Wizards Beyond Waverly Place’ set. (Disney/Eric McCandless)
(SPOILER ALERT) A huge secret about Selena Gomez‘s character, Alex Russo, was revealed in the season 2 finale of Wizards Beyond Waverly Place.
All season 2 episodes of the Wizards of Waverly Place sequel series arrived on Disney+ on Wednesday. This includes the two-part finale, which revealed Alex is the mother of the young wizard and star of the sequel series, Billie (Janice LeAnn Brown).
Brown and David Henrie, who stars as Justin Russo, spoke to ABC Audio about the emotional finale.
The truth of Billie’s parentage is revealed after Alex cries while seeing Billie in pain. Her tears cause the spell that wiped the Russo family’s memory to break, allowing everyone to remember Billie is Alex’s daughter.
“Very emotional thing to film for me,” Brown said. “Ms. Selena was so great, so it was really easy to feed off of her. She was such a great scene partner, and I’m just so excited for everyone to see the lore. I myself was shocked.”
Henrie says Brown “and Selena brought Emmy-worthy performances. Seriously, like, I think we’re gonna win an Emmy this season. And if we do, it’s in large thanks to you and Selena’s performance at the end there.”
The actor said watching Gomez perform the emotional scene was a full-circle moment going back to the 2009 film Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie.
“There’s an end scene in that movie where she has to get very emotional because she realizes that my character forgot who she is. It’s a tear-jerking moment and she couldn’t get the tears going on set,” Henrie said. “She got it eventually, but [it] was difficult. And now, present day, the script said her tear had to be a certain place on her cheek, and she is now so good, and her talent is so honed in, that she got the tear on the place where it was written to be on her cheeks. That’s how good she was.”
Christopher Briney and Jean Smart in ‘Hacks’ season 5. (Kenny Laubbacher)
The autumn he joined Hacks.
Christopher Briney has joined the season 5 cast of the Emmy-winning series Hacks. The new season of the HBO Max original comedy is currently in production.
While details about Briney’s character remain under wraps, HBO has released a photo of him on set with the show’s star Jean Smart. The photo finds Briney and Smart embracing with wide smiles. Briney’s character wears a mostly unbuttoned shirt with gold details and black jeans. The opened shirt shows off several tattoos on his chest.
Briney is known for his role as Conrad Fisher in the hit Prime Video series The Summer I Turned Pretty. The show finished its three-season run on Sept. 17, although a feature-length film has been announced and will serve as a direct continuation of the show’s series finale.
Along with Smart, the season 5 cast of Hacks includes Hannah Einbinder, Paul W. Downs, Megan Stalter, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, Mark Indelicato and Rose Abdoo.
Downs created and showruns Hacks with Lucia Aniello and Jen Statsky. The show was renewed for season 5 ahead of its season 4 finale back in May.
At the time, Erin Underhill, the president of Universal Television, said in a press release, “Like Deborah Vance herself, Hacks only gets bolder, sharper, and more iconic with time. We’re beyond thrilled to keep the laughter rolling with Jen, Paul, Lucia, our extraordinary cast and crew.”
In this June 18, 2025, file photo, Eric Dane attends the ‘Countdown’ premiere and after-party in Los Angeles. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for Prime Video, FILE)
Eric Dane is opening up about his future in acting while living with ALS.
During a panel hosted by the I Am ALS organization on Tuesday night, the Euphoria star said that moving forward, he plans to focus his acting career on roles that involve ALS.
“I’m fairly limited in what I can do physically as an actor, but I still have my brain, and I still have my speech,” Dane said from the stage, which he shared with the I Am ALS founders and his colleagues from the series Brilliant Minds.
“I’m willing to do just about anything. I’ll take on any role, but I think from here on out, it’s going to have to be, you know, ALS-centric,” he said.
“It’s gonna be very difficult for me to play any other role where, you know … look at the 800-pound gorilla in the room. And I’m fine with that,” he continued. “I’m fine with that. I’m grateful that I can still work in any capacity.”
Dane also discussed his experience acting in Brilliant Minds, in which he plays a firefighter living with ALS.
“I’ve never played a character who’s going through something … I’m dealing with in real time, in real life as well,” he said. “It was hard, and there were moments where it was very difficult for me to even get the lines out, but I overall, I was really grateful for the experience. I found it to be a bit cathartic.”
Dane said his condition can be disheartening, saying that though he has “no reason to be in a good spirit at any time” he still manages to find joy.
“It’s encouraging for me to know that I actually can have, like, a buoyant spirit in the face of something so horrible,” he added.
Dane also said he felt it was important to speak out about his ALS journey.
“It’s imperative that I share my journey with as many people as I can, because I don’t feel like my life is about me anymore,” he said.
The former Grey’s Anatomy star announced in April that he had been diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
In an interview that aired in June on Good Morning America, Dane told ABC News’ Diane Sawyer he was “fighting as much as I can.”
“There’s so much about it that’s out of my control,” he added at the time.
Dane, a father of two daughters, went on to describe himself as “resilient” in both his fight against ALS and his fight to stay optimistic.
“I’m very hopeful … I don’t think this is the end of my story,” he said, speaking with Sawyer. “And whether it is or it isn’t, I’m gonna carry that idea with me.”
ALS, short for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, is a degenerative neurological disorder where the symptoms worsen over time, according to the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH states that ALS causes motor neurons — a type of nerve cell in the brain and spinal cord — to deteriorate, causing the muscles to weaken, and eventually leads to paralysis, taking away a person’s ability to move, speak or even breathe.
There is currently no known cure for ALS, but some treatments, and physical and speech therapies, may slow down the progression of the disorder and improve an ALS patient’s quality of life.
The NIH states that the average prognosis for ALS patients is two to five years of survival from the time of first symptoms, but there is a range: 10% of people with the condition live 10 years or more.
