First-Place ‘Avatar’ on the Brink of Toppling ‘Titanic’

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 24, 2010 Share

We are not far away from Avatar toppling the Titanic all-time records for domestic and worldwide all-time box office. It made an estimated $36 million this weekend, easily topping the $18 million haul of Legend and winning the weekend box office for a sixth amazing weekend in a row.

What’s more, the domestic haul is now up to $552,797,000, topping the $533 million record of The Dark Knight and just $48 million short of Titanic. And here is the biggest number of all of them: in the worldwide box office, Avatar is now up to $1,836,143,000 according to Box Office Mojo. The current all-time record, held by Titanic is $1,842,879,955.

To sum it up, Titanic’s worldwide record is going down probably sometime tomorrow. Avatar is going to be all-time box office champ, and they did it by taking a page out of the Titanic playbook: by opening in December and keeping on doing business against modest competition. To be honest, I didn’t think it was going to happen after it only opened to $77 million dollars, but it has just hung on week in and week out. It only lost $15.9 percent from last week’s performance. And its Golden Globe victory last week is pretty much the icing on the cake. I gotta say, what a performance.

What I find amazing is that it’s far from over — this movie is not only going to beat the all-time record, it’s looking like it will beat is easily. It’s going to keep on making money for weeks on end at this rate.

Another thing that’s kind of been lost in the shuffle — this is already the biggest-grossing 3D movie of all time. So I think this movie is going to be a real game-changer in Hollywood and we’re going to see more and more 3D in order to fight off television and these downloads on the Internet, and all the rest of it – especially given the fact that people are willing to shell out extra cash for jacked-up ticket prices to see this in 3D.

As an aside, Tooth Fairy only made $14 million this weekend, a sure sign, perhaps, that audiences are tired of the dull family movies that The Rock keeps starring in.

1 Avatar Fox $36,000,000
2 Legion (2010) SGem $18,200,000
3 The Book of Eli WB $17,000,000
4 The Tooth Fairy Fox $14,500,000
5 The Lovely Bones P/DW
6 Sherlock Holmes WB $7,115,000
7 Extraordinary Measures CBS $7,000,000
8 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel Fox $6,500,000
9 It’s Complicated Uni. $6,190,000
10 The Spy Next Door LGF $4,750,000

That’s all for now. Don’t miss our next Reject Report later this week as we continue to follow Avatar and see whether its box office roll will continue.

Read more articles by John Cairns