'Island' Shutters Competition

As expected, Martin Scorsese's new film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Shutter Island, bested its box office competition this weekend, drawing an estimated $40.2 million.  This represents a best-ever debut for both Scorsese and DiCaprio, and is a fantastic debut for an R-rated genre flick.

Last week's big opener, Valentine's Day, no longer boosted by the natural publicity its namesake holiday generated, plummeted from the top spot.  It dropped 69%, coming in at $17.1 million for a cumulative total of $87.4 million so far.

In third place was James Cameron's Avatar, with $16.1 million.  It's 31.8% drop was it's biggest week-over-week to date.  With a whopping $687 million in domestic grosses to date, Avatar is undoubtedly reaching the end of its salad days, as it'll lose most of its 3-D screens to Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland in the coming weeks.

Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief had its strong debut weekend cut in half, bringing in $15.3 million for $58.7 million so far.  With another $68 million in international grosses, it should have no problem earning back its $95 million production budget.  It's no Harry Potter, but a strong performance on DVD/Blu-ray could help to make other books in the series a reality.

Finally, rounding out the top five is last week's second place opener, and another film that suffered a massive drop week-over-week, The Wolfman.  The action/horror flick dropped 69% to $9.8 million in its second weekend.  With an estimated $50 million domestically, and an anemic $46 million internationally (this type of picture usually does much better overseas), it will likely lose money for Universal Studios.

Valentine's Day Massacres Competition

Warner Bros. Valentine's Day opened this Valentine's Day weekend, and destroyed the competition with a whopping $66.9 million gross over the four day President's Day weekend in the US (and Family Day weekend in many parts of Canada).

Family-friendly Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief coming in second at $38.75 million.  If it can hold over well in its second weekend, expect more Percy Jackson books to be converted to films in the near future.

Universal's The Wolfman starring Benicio Del Toro came in third place, grossing $36.5 million.  It'll have a tough time recouping its estimated $150 million production cost.  The film also hasn't scored well on audience exit polls, which probably explains why it sat on Universal's shelf for 17 months before being released.

Avatar came in a strong fourth place in its 9th weekend with $30 million over the four days, bringing it's cumulative domestic gross to $667 million and a whopping $2.35 billion worldwide. 

Last week's number one film, Dear John, fell to fifth place with $18.8 million, bringing it's domestic total to $56.7 million.

Overall the weekend was the strongest President's Day weekend in history, and Sunday was the highest grossing Valentine's Day of all time.

Expect Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island to be the big draw this coming weekend.  The R-rated picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio can be expected to bring in around $35 million.

Avatar Knocked Off Its Perch

Hit by a reduced audience because of the Superbowl and some creative Superbowl counter-programming on the part of estrogen-fest Dear John (which grossed an estimated $32.4M, the highest gross ever during the Superbowl weekend), Avatar has finally fallen from the #1 spot on the box office chart in its eighth weekend.  While the film's incredible box office run is certainly far from over, it won't have a shot at one of Titanic's few remaining box office records, most consecutive weeks at #1 (Titanic's record is 15 weeks).

It is worth noting, however, that 47 days into Avatar's run, Titanic's all-time domestic box office gross has now been defeated.  Avatar now holds the record for domestic, international and worldwide grosses.  Inflation-adjusted is a completely different picture, of course, but the reality is that only two months ago, many people wondered if Avatar would ever be able to turn a profit.  Now the only question is how long do audiences have to wait for the inevitable sequels?

Avatar Takes The Crown

James Cameron's Avatar has done what seemed impossible, and is now the highest grossing film of all time worldwide (not adjusted for inflation).  This is after a mere 6 weeks in theatres, and with no end in sight at this time.

Avatar's total domestic gross looks like it'll come in around $750 Million (it has amassed $555 Million so far, rapidly approaching Titanic's $600 Million domestic total), and as much as $2 Billion overseas.  If the current pace continues, Avatar could gross as much as $3 Billion globally, making it the highest grossing film of all time regardless of whether inflation is taken into consideration. 

Adjusted for inflation, Avatar's domestic gross is currently 26th, and if the $750 Million projection above comes true, it will land at #11 on the all-time domestic grosses, adjusted for inflation. 

When ticket price increases are taken into consideration, the most attended film of all time in domestic terms remains 1939's Gone With the Wind, which grossed an estimated $1.5 Billion in domestic tickets sales over the course of several releases.  Of course Gone With the Wind didn't have to contend with television, video games, or any of the other multitudes of entertainment available to audiences today.  Globally, the world has not seen anything like Avatar since Titanic in 1997.

Another Week at the Top for Avatar

After another stellar weekend, Avatar managed to come up on top for the fifth weekend in a row.  Avatar managed to beat the new upstart, Denzel Washington's Book of Eli, to come out on top once again.  Total Avatar grosses for the weekend were approximately $41.3 Million, while Eli came in second at $31.6 Million.

The Book of Eli managed to beat Avatar on Friday night, but a large bump in Avatar's Saturday grosses allowed it to accelerate and maintain the lead through the rest of the weekend.  James Cameron's latest film is set to pass The Dark Knight as the second highest grossing film domestically sometime in the next week.  It's also now only $240 Million shy of topping Titanic as the highest grossing film worldwide of all time, a feat that seemed unimaginable only six weeks ago.

Avatar's grosses will only be helped by two major Golden Globe wins on Sunday night, including Best Picture (Drama) and Best Director (James Cameron).  The Globes typically act as a good predictor for Academy Award nominations, so when Avatar's inevtiable Best Picture nomination comes in, its already spectacular run will get another little boost.

Oh, and, as appears to be the norm for Avatar thus far, its fifth weekend out was also the highest grossing fifth weekend of all time, topping Titanics $30 Million gross from 12 years ago.  Avatar's pace has now outstripped The Dark Knight, as well.  The last Batman film had grossed (a mere) $471 Million domestically by the end of its fifth weekend, as compared to Avatar's $491 Million gross to date.

It'll be interesting to see where this thing tops out.