Box Office - 'Avatar' Fastest to $500 Million

The question is no longer if but when Avatar will dethrone Titanic in US and global ticket sales. The film just crossed $500 million - by far the fastest to accomplish that feat - after earning another estimated $11 million on Monday. Of course, it's an estimate, so that could change. However, if it does anything over $6 million, it will be at half a billion in the US and its total haul is within $220 million of James Cameron's other film already. The numbers are, pardon the pun, otherworldly. Although Avatar was the second-fastest to cross $450 million, trailing The Dark Knight by a days, it took only four more days to zoom past $500 million. The Dark Knight needed 18 days to get the extra $50 million. This is with an opening weekend that was well below $100 million, by the way. So how long does Titanic have before Avatar usurps it? Not long. Last night's Golden Globe victories should be worth a couple million more each day this week, even though the numbers will drop from Monday's holiday total. Expect almost no slippage this week and another stout weekend to put the film past The Dark Knight in gross receipts in the US. From there, it's about $65 million left to Titanic, and this film will see a small spike when the Oscar nominations are announced on February 2nd. After that weekend (although Sunday could be dry thanks to the Super Bowl), I see no way Avatar isn't at least breathing down Titanic's neck, if it doesn't pass it before then. By my blind guessing (OK, not really), I think Avatar will pick up another $14 - $16 million this week, plus the $11 million estimate from today. Then I'm putting another $27 million on the table for this weekend. That's $52 - $54 million, meaning only $40 million is left to account for. Next week will be slightly smaller, and it won't have that huge Monday spike, so let's say $35 million, conservatively, between Monday and the following Sunday. That just about gets it to $600 million with plenty of room to spare by February 7th. So then what? $700 million? Three-quarters-of-a-billion in the US alone? Well, let's not go crazy, but if it holds well enough during February, picking up maybe another $50 million, then if there is an Oscar bump, Avatar will absolutely shatter Titanic's record. Anything over $660 million is ten percent more, and anything over $700 million pretty much wipes out the inflation argument. The way this film is going - which is to say, not slowing down very much at all, based on its near $10 million-per-day average last week - it can realistically flirt with the 700 club in about six weeks, but that might be where it runs out of gas. Competition, which I said would be the reason this film wouldn't break all the records, hasn't made much of a dent, but instead has only increased total box office numbers over the past five weeks. Consider this: The five weekends between December 19, 2008 and January 19, 2009 drew $717 million in ticket sales. The past five weeks saw an annual increase of - brace yourself - $223 million. That's not incremental. Since December 18th, the weekend-only box office has rung up an astonishing $940 million. I checked the numbers three times, by the way. It's up about 25% from a year ago. Most of that, yes, is Avatar. But it's not like nobody's seeing Sherlock Holmes or The Book of Eli. Hell, The Blind Side has made $70 million since Avatar was released, and it was already entering its second month on December 18th. So we can discount the competition argument; people are seeing Avatar and other movies in terrific numbers. The international box office is harder to project, because I don't know where it's playing, if it's expanding overseas, or anything else. We do know that Avatar is closing in on Titanic in terms of foreign business, and that record should fall within another week. Then it's just balancing the scales to hit the magical $1.8 billion number. And actually, this will do much better than that. The new all-time record will be over $2 billion.

Comments

[Krystal]

Box Office Mojo has Titanic's adjusted gross (for ticket price inflation) at $943.3M.

[Get The Big Picture]

Point taken, but again, it was a different time. The inflation argument is counterbalanced by how long studios kept movies in theaters in the past, almost a year in that instance. Even with all of its success, Avatar won't be in theaters after Labor Day. The DVD market is more profitable now than the extended play of movies, even blockbusters, in just a few theaters.

[SEAN]

GOOOO AVATARRRRRRRR

Everyone needs to see & hear this story, & honestly take it to heart

[RLH]

I think $700 million domestic is possible, should it generate several Oscar nominations AND sweeps the show.