Fearless Forecast: 'Avatar' Rinses and Repeats

Not much should change this weekend at the box office, other than the total numbers. Avatar will win again, should do so convincingly, and will close in on $350 million in three weeks. Where is that historically? If it hits $300 million today, then we're looking at the third-fastest film to do that. Not coincidentally, the top two - Dark Knight and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - have been released in the past couple years, both enjoying slightly higher average ticket prices because of business at IMAX. The holds shown by Avatar are pretty staggering, and it shouldn't slip a normal amount this weekend, either. I expect somewhere between a 20 - 30% drop in weekend number three, a response to big college football bowl games, the final week of the NFL regular season, post-holiday travel, and a few other things that always happen the first weekend of the year. Still, the average is well over 40% for a reigning number one, and Avatar hasn't even gotten close to that yet. If it loses 30%, that's a $52 million weekend, which should make Avatar about another five days away from $400 million. Sherlock Holmes might finish in second place, but it will have to overcome Alvin and the Chipmunks, which looked like it would start to fade early in its run, but came back to hold second place each day this week. Both holiday movies look to make around $35 million or more, and in the case of Sherlock, that puts it close to $150 million, meaning Warner Bros. can probably call off the dogs and let the film make whatever it's going to make organically from this point. Speaking of, The Blind Side will be Warner Bros.' second out-of-the-blue $200 million movie of 2009 (now bleeding into 2010, of course). Like Avatar on a smaller scale, the Sandra Bullock movie has just kept finding an audience, and now, it has outgrossed its opening weekend competition, New Moon, once you remove the first three days. We've talked about this before, and while it's great for Twihards that their movie opens so strong, it is not attracting any new audience after the debut weekend. And Blind Side joins The Hangover and Gran Torino as Warner Bros. movies that have made money well into their second months of release. It's Complicated should continue to exploit the older moviegoers this weekend. I don't know the budget figures, but I would assume that even with the cast, Nancy Meyers is working with less coin than her $85 million The Holiday. And it's doing OK - $35 million through Wednesday - so with another $15 million or so coming this weekend, It's Complicated will move very close to profitability. The Top Five:
1 - Avatar ($53.5 million)
2 - Sherlock Holmes ($39.5 million)
3 - Alvin and the Chipmunks ($36 million)
4 - It's Complicated ($16 million)
5 - The Blind Side ($7 million)