12 years after it bowed to box office record supremacy, James Cameron’s Avatar is king of the world again.

Thanks to the action-adventure-fantasy’s impressive reissue ticket sales performance in China, where it earned $21.1 million, Avatar reigned as the weekend’s overseas and global box office champ.

With its total earnings now at $2.81 billion, the film starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver took back the crown from Avengers: Endgame as the global box office all-time champ.

Avatar, now a Disney property with the studio’s purchase of 20^th Century Fox, also wrestled another title from Avengers: Endgame.

The first Avatar installment has regained its status as the highest grossing IMAX movie of all time. The reissue’s strong performance bodes well for the box office prospects of the four Avatar sequels whose release dates are spread through 2028, with Avatar 2 scheduled to open on December 16, 2022.

In the meantime, Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon, voiced by Kelly Marie Tran, Awkwafina, Gemma Chan, Sandra Oh, Daniel Dae Kim and other Asian actors, earned $11.5 million to increase its overall international take to $36.8 million so far.

Another animated film, Warner Brothers’ Tom & Jerry, grabbed $2.6 million to add to its overseas total of $38.7 million.

In Japan, Shin Evangelion, also an animated movie, written and co-directed by Hideaki Anno, and the fourth installment in the Rebuild of Evangelion anime series, took in $3.4 million. Those figures marked the second biggest IMAX debut for a Japanese film since the spectacular, record-breaking ticket sales of Demon Slayer.

In the American (United States and Canada) market, Raya and the Last Dragon topped the box office race again with $5.5 million.

The domestic box office market is slowly opening up. While New York finally allowed its cineplexes to reopen, not all movie houses have unlocked their doors. And there’s that 25 percent capacity restriction due to the COVID-19 health safety restrictions.

Los Angeles movie theaters are also given permission to reopen but with the same health safety protocols. Some LA cineplexes’ screens are expected to glow again with movie images this coming weekend.

In this American box office scenario, Tom & Jerry managed to snag $4.1 million and take second place.

Chaos Walking, Lionsgate’s adventure/sci-fi, ranked third with $2.25 million. Eddie Huang’s basketball drama, Boogie, captured the fourth spot with $730,000.

Staying in the top five is the coronavirus pandemic moviegoing season’s phenomenal hit, The Croods: A New Age, which still raised $520,000 at the box office.

Liam Neeson’s The Marksman is still hitting its target with $465,000, enough for a sixth place position.

Worth noting is that Jathi Ratnalu, an Indian Telugu-language film, broke into the top ten and in fact landed at seventh with $460,000. Written and directed by Anudeep KV, the comedy-drama stars Naveen Polishetty, Priyadarshi, Rahul Ramakrishna and Faria Abdullah.

Rounding out the domestic market’s highest ten earners are Rami Malek, Denzel Washington and Jared Leto’s The Little Things and Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman (both earned $400,000) and Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman’s The Father ($312,500).