Disney+’s $1.5 Billion Space Opera Soaring Past Marvel Classics As A Streaming Hit

Published Sep 7, 2026, 11:44 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+ is the streaming home of a $1.5 billion space opera that is part of a huge franchise and has now broken new ground on streaming. Disney+'s library of movies includes quite a few major franchises. Chief among those are the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars. Both of them have also been mined for potential streaming-exclusive stories, leading to many of Disney+'s best TV shows, which include original series like The Mandalorian and Andor on the Star Wars side, and shows like Loki, WandaVision, and Daredevil: Born Again in the MCU. Disney+ keeps winning with franchises. Disney+ is also the home of many theatrical movies that became box office hits and then went on to find success on streaming. That list includes recent arrivals like Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, which just came to the streaming service on September 2, Anne Hathaway's The Devil Wears Prada 2, and more. That said, Disney+'s slate of movies also has room for 2025 projects to keep finding new ways to shine a year later. This includes James Cameron's Avatar: Fire and Ash, which is back on Disney+'s Top 10 Moves chart in the United States. Why Avatar: Fire And Ash Is Resurging On Disney+ At the time of writing, Avatar: Fire and Ash stands as the 9th most-watched movie on Disney+ in the US. This marks the first time that the space opera movie is trending on Disney+ nationwide in September, as it fell off the streamer's US charts sometime before the new month. Avatar: Fire and Ash now leaves behind Marvel Studios' The Avengers, one of the most important movies in the MCU and a must-watch entry in the lead-up to December's Avengers: Doomsday, on Disney+'s US chart. The sci-fi movie now eyes surpassing Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Avengers: Infinity War on Disney+. There are a few reasons for Avatar: Fire and Ash's renewed success in the United States. The space opera continues to perform well globally, with Avatar: Fire and Ash currently Disney+'s 7th most-watched movie worldwide, according to FlixPatrol. The movie's status as a box office hit with over $1.5 billion and a crowd-pleaser with a near-perfect 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes also make it a perfect enduring choice on the streamer. Finally, with Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu leading Disney+'s charts, Avatar: Fire and Ash, another space opera, acts like a nice follow-up on Disney+. The Franchise's Future Remains Unclear Avatar: Fire and Ash was not created with the idea of the space opera franchise ending there. Cameron has revealed plans for both Avatar 4 and Avatar 5, which are currently dated for theatrical releases on December 21, 2029, and December 19, 2031. However, whether those two sci-fi movies will really come to pass remains up in the air. Speaking to The Empire Film Podcast back in May, Cameron explained that he was trying to figure out how to make the Avatar sequels "in half the time for two-thirds of the cost." This would directly deal with the problem of their massive budgets. While that is being worked on, the fate of the franchise remains unclear, but Avatar: Fire and Ash's streaming resurgence on Disney+ comes as the perfect way of keeping the sci-fi universe fresh in viewers' minds. Release Date December 19, 2025 Runtime 197 Minutes Director James Cameron Writers Amanda Silver, Rick Jaffa, James Cameron, Josh Friedman, Shane Salerno Producers Jon Landau, James Cameron Prequel(s) Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water Franchise(s) Avatar