Disney+’s $1.5 Billion Space Opera Passes Colossal Streaming Milestone As It Leaves Marvel Hits Behind

21 hours ago 10

Published Sep 14, 2026, 11:40 AM EDT

Felipe Rangel is a Movie and TV Journalist ScreenRant. He has been writing about movies and TV since 2021. Felipe joined ScreenRant in 2022, working across different teams, covering everything from breaking news to features to reviews and more.

Felipe is a writer who is an avid film and TV fan, with superhero movies and series being his biggest passion. He graduated from college in 2019, having studied Journalism. Before college, he spent a month studying at the Oxford English Centre. His superhero knowledge expands to the comics, with his undergraduate thesis being "Politics Reflected In American Comics."

Disney+'s $1.5 billion space opera is one of the biggest movies in the world, and it has just passed a colossal milestone in a key chart, leaving some Marvel classics behind. Disney+'s streaming library is filled with exciting sci-fi movies and TV shows. A lot of them come from the Star Wars franchise, which stands as the usual go-to when the topic turns to space operas. Right now, that massive franchise is leading the streamer's movie charts after Pedro Pascal's Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu was released on Disney+ on September 2 alongside two other Star Wars releases.

That said, Disney+'s sci-fi offerings are not only connected to Star Wars. There are other major franchises on the streamer, with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a superhero movie and TV show shared universe, heavily using sci-fi elements, including other worlds, aliens, space combat, advanced technology, time travel, the multiverse, and many more. Now, a pure sci-fi space opera movie has passed some of the MCU's best films on Disney+ nationwide, James Cameron's Avatar: Fire and Ash, and in doing so, the latest entry in what stands as one of the most popular movie franchises of all time has passed a colossal milestone.

Avatar: Fire & Ash Can't Be Stopped On Disney+'s Top 10

Avatar: Fire and Ash flew past the milestone of 50 days on Disney+ in the United States' Top 10 Movies chart, currently at a high 55-day mark. That makes it the second movie with the longest time on that coveted chart, as only Tom Holland's Spider-Man: No Way Home ranks higher right now on Disney+'s domestic top 10 at 119 days. That said, the Marvel and Sony movie has been boosted by the fact that Holland's Peter Parker recently returned in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, which has become the 3rd highest-grossing movie of all time, with over $2.4 billion worldwide.

No new releases in the Avatar franchise are expected to come for a few years, with Avatar: Fire and Ash having grossed $1.5 billion back when it was released in theaters on December 19, 2025. Avatar: Fire and Ash also shows no signs of slowing down on Disney+'s US chart. The hit space opera should extend its run, as Avatar: Fire and Ash currently stands as the 5th most-watched movie on Disney+ in the United States, climbing four positions on the last day. The Avatar movie left behind Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Avengers: Endgame, The Avengers, and Avengers: Age of Ultron.

What's The Latest On Avatar's Future?

As it stands, Disney has Avatar 4 scheduled to arrive in theaters on December 21, 2029, with Avatar 5 landing a couple of years after that, on December 19, 2031. If that holds, it would mark the shortest gap between Avatar movies, with the planned two-year wait being shorter than the three years between 2022's Avatar: The Way of Water and 2025's Avatar: Fire And Ash.

That said, the sci-fi movie franchise's future is still uncertain, as Cameron revealed during an interview after the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards in August that he was looking at potentially prioritizing non-Avatar movies, as he is working out which stories he wants to tell as a writer, a director, or a producer. It remains to be seen at what level Cameron will be involved with the remaining Avatar sequels, but Avatar: Fire and Ash's new Disney+ milestone showcases why the studio is likely to move forward with the successful franchise even if Cameron is not in the director's seat.