When James Cameron's Avatar launched into theatres in December, there was little double that it would do well, but I don't think anyone dared to predict that it could take on Cameron's last blockbuster, Titanic, with it's $1.8 Billion dollar worldwide gross. Now, after only a month in theatres, it appears that Avatar has a shot at sinking the big boat's record box office results.
Avatar and Titanic both had the advantage of being released during the lucrative Christmas season, when people are off work and out of school, and have more time to go to the movies during the week. This meant that grosses for these films through the weeks of Christmas and New Year's were typically 50-60% higher per day than they would be at a non-holiday time. This is the same reason that movies released during the summer can do so well.
Avatar has also been buoyed by higher than average ticket prices due to the number of people seeing the film on 3D and IMAX 3D screens.
The one thing both blockbusters have in common is incredibly small week-over-week drops in attendance. Typically, movies that have big openings (even during holiday seasons) have large week-over-week drop offs. Whenever an opening weekend record is set (for example, The Dark Knight, with a massive $158 Million opening weekend) it's followed by a precipitous drop, regardless of how well the movie is received (in The Dark Knight's case, a 52% drop to $75 Million in its second weekend). Titanic and Avatar have both managed to buck that trend.
When we look at Titanic's record setting gross, it was achieved by having a good (but not great) opening weekend, followed by week-after-week of minimal drops in box office returns. Titanic opened with a $28.6 Million opening weekend, which then jump up 23% in its second weekend (Christmas) and was down only 3% over New Year's. After that, grosses held steady for weeks, moving up a few percentage points in some cases, and never down more than 30% weekend-over-weekend.
Avatar is following a pattern which seems to be similar to Titanic's. Avatar had a much bigger opening weekend than Titanic, obviously, $77 Million, and that opening was hampered somewhat by snow storms along the Eastern seaboard that prevented moviegoers from getting to the multiplex. In its second weekend (also Christmas), Avatar was down 1.8% to $75.6 Million, and New Year's was down a further 9% to $68.5 Million. In its fourth weekend, Avatar was down 29.2% to $48.5 Million (Titanic was down 13.8% to $28.7 Million in the same time frame).
While Avatar's week-over-week grosses are dropping at a faster rate than Titanic's, its grosses are also much higher each week, so it has further to fall before it matches Titanic's numbers. As you'd expect, Avatar is well ahead of Titanic in terms of week-over-week comparisons. Avatar has earned $429 Million compared to Titanic's $198 Million at the same point.
The question is, can Avatar keep up the pace and take out Titanic's record box office (both domestically and internationally)?
If we assume that Avatar's grosses will reduce by 30% week-over-week going forward, then Avatar will overtake Titanic's domestic grosses sometime in March or April. If the reduction week-over-week is 20%, Avatar will pass Titanic sometime in early February. If, however, the weekly decline is 35%, Avatar will never get there, as it'll likely be pushed out of the lucrative 3D screens by new films before it can achieve Titanic's massive grosses.
Films in the all time top grosses internationally tend to have one major thing in common (The Dark Knight being the exception). International grosses represent about two thirds of the overall revenue. Avatar is no different, with international grosses equalling 67.2% of the revenue to date. Based on this, Avatar should have very little difficult passing Titanic as the all time box office champ. Avatar has $1.3 Billion to date, whereas Titanic took months to get to its total of $1.8 Billion. Another $500 Million does not seem unlikely at this point.
Avatar's word of mouth has been nothing short of fantastic, and many people are seeing the film multiple times. This is having the effect of keeping Avatar's reduction of grosses up, so I suspect we are looking at the film that will take down Titanic both domestically and internationally. The question is, how long will it take to do it?
One quick side note: All of this analysis does not take into account inflation. If we take ticket prices into account, Titanic absolutely stomps Avatar, coming in at 6th on the all-time list as compared to Avatar's current standing of 58th place (Gone with Wind is #1, with an estimated adjusted gross of $1.4 Billion domestically).
Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 1:17PM 
Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland blew away already high expectations, coming in with a total of $116 million domestically in its opening weekend and $210 million worldwide. It came in as the sixth highest grossing opening weekend of all time, and easily took the record for largest opening weekend in the first quarter of the year. Given its family-friendly nature, broadly popular subject matter, strong marketing, 3-D "wow" factor and Johnny Depp and Tim Burton's star power, the film should hold over well in the weekends to come, at least until such time as its 3-D screens are taken away for other, newer, films.