LOS ANGELES (AP) — James Cameron's Avatar had a $41.3 million weekend to shoot past Star Wars as the No. 3 movie on the all-time domestic box office charts. Next stop, The Dark Knight.
No. 1 for the fifth-straight weekend, Cameron's sci-fi saga raised its domestic total to $491.8 million and should top $500 million after revenues are counted on Martin Luther King Day, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Worldwide, 20th Century Fox's Avatar lifted its total to $1.6 billion, second only to Cameron's last movie, 1997's Titanic, at $1.8 billion.
"One guy makes two movies in 10 years, and they're by far the biggest movies of all time. That's remarkable," said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for the studio.
Avatar topped the original Star Wars, which took in $460.9 million domestically in its original run and several reissues over the years. But factoring in today's higher admission prices, Star Wars remains well ahead of Avatar on actual number of tickets sold.
Avatar now is closing in on The Dark Knight, No. 2 domestically with $533.3 million. After that, only Cameron's Titanic at $600 million will remain ahead of Avatar domestically.
"We'll be proud of our No. 3 slot," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., which released The Dark Knight and has hopes for more in the Batman franchise from its director, Christopher Nolan. "I can just give Chris Nolan a nudge that he's got to raise the bar."
Warner, which has Nolan's sci-fi tale Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio opening this July, had a strong No. 2 debut of $31.6 million for its action thriller The Book of Eli. The movie stars Denzel Washington as a post-apocalypse prophet carrying the last known Bible to safe haven across a decimated America.
Expanding nationwide after a month in limited release, Paramount's drama The Lovely Bones came in at No. 3 with $17.1 million. Directed by The Lord of the Rings creator Peter Jackson, The Lovely Bones features Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz and Stanley Tucci in the story of a murdered teen looking back on the world from the afterlife.
Lionsgate's family action tale The Spy Next Door debuted at No. 6 with $9.7 million. It stars Jackie Chan as a newly retired agent forced back into the spy game when bad guys come after him and his girlfriend's kids.
Like Titanic, which dominated the Academy Awards 12 years ago, Avatar is expected to remain aloft in the box office charts as Oscar season progresses. Avatar was up for best drama at Sunday's Golden Globes and is considered a likely best-picture nominee when Oscar nominations come out Feb. 2.
"It's kind of the cherry on top of the cake for this movie to not only be a massive box office hit, but to get all this awards attention," said Paul Dergarabedian, box office analyst for Hollywood.com. "It's hard sometimes to get a 50- or 60-year-old out of their chair to go see a science-fiction movie in 3-D. But if Avatar gets enough recognition from the critics, they may just do it."
Fox executive Aronson would not say if the studio expects Avatar to pass either the $600 million domestic total for Titanic or its $1.8 billion worldwide total. Some box office watchers say Avatar could climb as high $2 billion, though.
"Titanic was a ship. Batman had a motorcycle. Avatar's a rocket ship," Aronson said. "Is there a lot of fuel left in the tank? You bet."
Even if Avatar sets a new revenue record, it's doubtful it would sell as many tickets as Titanic did because of today's higher admission prices.
Titanic sold about 130 million tickets domestically based on average ticket prices of about $4.60 back in 1997 and 1998. Based on today's average domestic price of about $7.50, Avatar would be at around half that mark.
Average admission prices for Avatar likely run even higher, given that much of its business comes from a 3-D version, which costs a few dollars extra to see.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Tuesday.
7 comments:
Okay, a couple of thing to note here:
First of all, where the fark do these guys live where the average movie ticket costs $7.50? The eighties?
Second of all, that picture rocks.
Third, I'm glad Star Wars still leads in actual ticket sales.
Fourth, pretty annoying of that guy to suggest he's gonna tell Christopher Nolan to do better his second highest grossing movie ever became the third. Fuck off, dude.
Fifth, I have to admit I'm kind of interested in The Book of Eli because it looks cool, but I'm dubious because it's about saving the last Bible on a post-apocalyptic Earth. So what? It's probably the damn thing's fault that WWIII happens in the first place.
I concur. That picture totally rocks.
The whole "highest-grossing" thing is never clearly explained. Sometimes they adjust the dollars for the current economy, sometimes they don't.
Somewhere there's an adjusted "All Time" list which still has Gone With The Wind as the (proportionate) highest all-time grosser, and Star Wars somewhere in the top 5 with E.T., etc.
It's a lot like on election night, where the entire country starts popping up Red, when in reality the landmasses in no way reflect the actual populations or voting numbers (or intelligence, for that matter). CNN did a great morphed-out map of the US that inflated or deflated the states areas relative to their population. Jersey ended up about the size of Wyoming, and vice-versa. Threw the whole perspective on the election onto a ho'...nutha...level...
Just sayin'.
Why don't they just sum it up as one of the biggest or one of the most popular films. Unless I'm getting a cut I could care less how much it grossed.
Found it. Note Avatar's relative position:
Almost...there...
Cool! Thanks Stan. Is that Captain Avatar from the live action Star Blazers?
Check the SW prequel trilogy's numbers:
Phantom Menace: 19
Attack of the Clones: 85 (ouch!)
Revenge of the Sith: 58
Obviously PM got the numbers for being the first new SW flick in 20 years, but then mostly killed it for Clones, which redeemed things almost half way for Sith.
Indeed, Octo, that is the live-action, Japanese Captain Avatar as my avatar (nee "Okita"). I've watched the 30-second trailer on Youtube approximately 60,000 times, and frame-by-frame at that.
They beat me to it. But then, they should have.
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