Box Office - $73 Million Debut for 'Avatar'

Let's look at the big board...and it's $73 million for Avatar in its domestic debut. That's behind I Am Legend for the all-time December opening, but just slightly ahead of Return of the King. Of course, the Hobbit movie actually opened on Wednesday, so that's not a very accurate comparison. What is a good comparison, strangely enough, is 2012. That film opened in 3,400 theaters and racked up $65 million a month ago. The per-screen average was about $19,000, and that all looks a lot like Avatar's 3,500 theaters and $21,000 per-screen number to arrive at $73 million. Now let's see if Avatar can match the Roland Emmerich movie's $715 million worldwide gross. It's off to a good start in that regard; the international total is $232 million, a little higher than 2012 did in its debut. Fox says it's the biggest worldwide opening ever for an original content ever. The $73 million is a little less than our prediction and industry estimates, and you can pin a lot of that on the east coast snowstorms. The blizzard almost certainly kept some people away, but how many is hard to say. But because of that and the buzz the movie has created in the past couple of days, it's doubtful Avatar will drop below $40 million next weekend. You have people who will have their first chance to see it, you have people who have now been convinced to check it out, and you have the holiday weekend, which is sure to help, too. But we'll pay attention to the weekday numbers to see how much slippage there is mid-week. Avatar outgrossed everything else in theaters combined, and that's bad news for Disney. The studio's big hand-drawn animation charge is probably going to turn out to be a failure. The Princess and the Frog lost 50% of its audience this weekend, and the total box office is just $44 million versus a $105 million budget. By the end of the second weekend, most films have made half of their total gross. If that holds here, Princess and the Frog won't make its money back. We know Did You Hear About the Morgans? won't be able to. Somehow, Sony spent $60 million on a romantic comedy and the movie stiffed - $7 million in 2,700 theaters. Bye bye. The same goes for Invictus, which won't benefit from awards stuff, because the Globes are a month away and the Oscar nominations are a little further than that. It's only made $16 million and may drop to the bottom of the top ten next week. Better box office news for another awards hopeful: Up in the Air finally jumped into the top ten, even though it's still only in 175 theaters. It placed eighth, earning just over $3 million, but it will certainly perform well over the next couple months after it expands nationwide. The Top Five:
1 - Avatar ($73 million)
2 - The Princess and the Frog ($12.5 million)
3 - The Blind Side ($10 million)
4 - Did You Hear Abou the Morgans? ($7 million)
5 - New Moon ($4.3 million)