Box Office: Avatar Crosses $1 Billion Worldwide

The 2009 box office ended on a high note as James Cameron’s Avatar crossed one billion dollars in worldwide box office sales. This means that Cameron is now the only director to have two movies cross one billion dollars with Avatar now joining the list that contains Cameron’s last film, 1997′s Titanic. While the worldwide gross of Avatar is beyond impressive, it continue to bank more and more money domestically. After three weeks of release Avatar has earned an astonishing $352 million and shows no signs of slowing down. Record breaking is a phrase that has become synonymous with Avatar and we will be hearing much more from this epic film in the coming weeks. For those who haven’t been following the box office success of this movie continue reading for a full breakdown of what Avatar has achieved in a very short amount of time.

Avatar opened worldwide on December 18th 2009. Opening weekend the film banked $77 million domestically. In its second week of release the film broke the record for the highest second week gross after only dropping 2% from opening weekend. For the weekend of December 25th-27th Avatar grossed another stunning $75.6 million which beat the record previously held by The Dark Knight ($75.1 million.)

The next record Avatar broke was for all time third weekend gross by pulling in $68.4 million which beat the previous record holder that was Spider-Man ($45 million.) The question now is if Avatar can top The Dark Knight and sink the Titanic. It is still too early to tell how far Avatar will be able to go, but with the momentum behind this film it doesn’t appear to be slowing down anytime soon. By the end of next weekend the film will have grossed well over $400 million. Most blockbusters drop after their initial opening and the weekend grosses drop week after week. Avatar is the exception to this rule. Opening at $77 million, Cameron’s sci-fi epic has fell only a few percent each week and has continued to break records for second, third, and now most likely fourth weeks of release. At this rate Avatar will have no problem getting to $500 million which puts it within an ear shot of The Dark Knight ($533 million) and Titanic ($600 million.)

For the record here is a breakdown of where Avatar falls into the grand scheme of things:

ALL TIME WORLDWIDE

1. Titanic $1,842,879,955

2. Return of the King $1,119,110,941

3. Dead Man’s Chest $1,066,179,725

4. Avatar $1,025,378,961

5. The Dark Knight $1,001,921,825

Total Weekend Box Office Jan 1-Jan 3

1 Avatar $68,300,000 $352.1

2 Sherlock Holmes $38,400,000 $140.7

3 Alvin & the Chipmunks 2 $36,600,000 $157.3

4 It’s Complicated $18,700,000 $59.1

5 The Blind Side $12,600,000 $209

6 Up in the Air $11,400,000 $45

7 Princess & the Frog $10,013,000 $86

8 Did You Hear About the Morgans? $5,200,000 $25.6

9 Nine $4,250,000 $14

10 Invictus $4,130,000 $40.7

How far will Avatar go? I think after the next week or so we will have a better idea of how big this movie can truly be. It is hard to compare to Titanic and The Dark Knight because the box office tracking on both those films are very different. Titanic opened with a modest amount but held very strong for the better part of a year. The Dark Knight has the highest opening of all time and also held on strong for many months. Avatar opened with a strong number and is not slowing down. It has dropped only a small amount over the last few weeks and if this continues over the next several weeks both TDK and Titanic could have a very serious challenger on their hands.

What do you think? How far will Avatar go? Leave your opinions on this below.

Box office numbers courtesy of Box Office Mojo