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.

Can Avatar Really Take On Titanic?

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).

And Into Second Place

Avatar took second place at the global box office on Wednesday, earning $1.13 Billion in 20 days of release.  That's an average of $56.5M per day.  It'll take another $700 Million to pass Titanic, so the boat still has some distance on James Cameron's latest epic.

Avatar's earnings are coming at quite a bit faster pace than Titanic.  Box Office Mojo shows Titanic at $166 Million on day 20, whereas Avatar has doubled that pace with $374M in domestic grosses over the same period of time.  Titanic's $600 Million domestic gross was earned over a staggering 287 days in theatres.  It's unlikely that Avatar will still be playing on the big screen in October, but at this point, anything is possible.

The Dark Knight, which earned $533 Million during its domestic run, had done $410 Million (77% of total gross) in business by day 20.  TDK started bigger, with the largest opening weekend of all time, but did not hold over as well week-over-week as Avatar has thus far.

3-D continues to be the big playing factor, with approximately 80% of the gross coming from digital 3D and IMAX 3-D screens.  This helps the grosses, obviously, due to the premium price of the tickets. 

Avatar receives some competition this weekend with Daybreakers and Youth In Revolt, but shouldn't have any difficulty retaining the top spot from the two upstarts.  Daybreakers is the wild card, with a premise that appeals to a young audience and would typically result in a big opening weekend.  The R rating will likely keep the grosses well behind Avatar, though, which is a more friendly PG-13 and is appealing to a broader spectrum of movie patrons.

Avatar Takes Third

As of Tuesday, January 7th, Avatar is the 3rd highest grossing film of all time (worldwide - not adjusted for inflation) with $1.098 billion in ticket sales. 

At its current run rate, it will pass Lord of the Rings: Return of the King in the number two spot on Wednesday or Thursday.  After that, it's a long $700 million climb to make a run at Titanic's top spot.