The OtherArena

[jdw]

$75,617,183 Avatar
$62,390,000 Holmes
$48,875,415 Chipmunks 2

Monster second weekend for Avatar. Best second weekends ever:

$75,617,183 Avatar
$75,166,466 TDK
$72,170,363 Shrek 2
$71,417,527 Spidey
$62,345,264 Pirates 2

#2-5 are all $400M movies. Avatar was down just 1.8%.

Looks like Avatar has a chance of being a phenom. It's up to $212M+, and was pulling in strong weekday numbers this past week. We've got a long holiday week coming up, and Sat-Sun post New Years. Getting to $300M by the end of New Years weekend is very possible.

Huge overall record weekend. Chipmunks bagged another $25M+ from Wed-Thu, so those two are clearly going to end up with over $100M by the end of the holidays, and Holmes a heck of a lot more.

John

[jdw]

Avatar is officially a phenom. All from boxofficemojo.com:

New Years Weekend
$68,300,000 Avatar
$38,385,000 Holmes
$36,600,000 Chipmunks 2

3rd Weekends
$68,300,000 Avatar
$45,036,912 Spidey 1
$42,664,219 TDK
$37,931,716 Shrek 2
$35,215,201 Pirates 2
$33,315,278 Titanic
$32,891,653 SW: The Phantom Menace

The record for 4th weekends is $28,716,310 by Titanic and with Spidey also above $$28M and TDK at $26M. Avatar would need to drop massively next week to miss breaking those as well, though it's possible after back-to-back holiday weekends.

It's the 2nd fastest to $350M: 17 days to the 14 of TDK and 23 of Pirates 2 and Transformers 2. The $400M mark is 18 days by TDK, which it won't break. #2 on the $400M list is Shrek 2 at 43 days, then Pirates 2 at 45. One would think that it will get to $400M in right around 40 days or less, depending on how much it's pulling in on the coming weekdays.

Worldwide is staggering:

$1,843M Titanic
$1,119M LOTR: ROTK
$1,066M Pirates 2
$1,019M Avatar
$1,002M TDK

It's pretty much a lock to top ROTK as the #2 movie of all-time worldwide.

$400M is a lock. $500M depends on a combo of repeat business and how many people have ducked it because of the holidays filled with doing other things (like me).

John

[jdw]

It's a bit sad to see The Princess and the Frog at $86M, though it had a decent weekend for it's 6th week out. It's quite a good movie in the tradition of Disney animated classics. Good storyline, good animation, good songs for the genre. In a sense, it feels like a Pixar mentality to return Disney animation to it's form. Lee and I both loved it, and the kids in the theater were enjoying it as well. This feels like it should have been the movie to relaunch that form of animation.

That it hasn't raced to an easy $150M+ is pretty sad, and one gets the feeling that classic style annimation is dead, at least on the big Disney scale. We're in the world of CG annimation. One has to accept the world changes, and lord knows that I love Pixar movies. But the death of this form, especially when it can still produce strong movies like this one, is hard to take.

John

[jdw]

When I saw the Friday box office estimates yesterday, I thought that would stick a fork in Avatar's chances at $500M baring some kind of Oscar bonanza. Down 47.5%, which is pretty damn good by itself but was the first significant weekend drop for the movie.

-47.5% Fri
-17.7% Sat
-19.5% Sun

Scrap that theory.

And I should have considered the obvious:

* Fri 1/1/2010 = Holiday
* Fri 1/8/2010 = School Day

They didn't have similar full days of viewership potential.

4th Weekends
$48,500,000 Avatar
$28,716,310 Titanic
$28,508,104 Spidey
$26,117,030 TDK

Staggering.

The 5th weekend record is of course Titanic (which held all of them from 4th to 12th weekends, and probably a ways after that) with $30M. Who knows if Avatar tops that as well.

Avatar is up to $429M. At the rate it's making cash, $500M looks like a lock unless another "early in the year" phenom pops up to slow it.

This is one of the most amazing stats that I've ever seen:

Through 8th Day
$261,847,503 TDK
$160,189,097 Avatar

That was the second Friday for each. Through that point, TDK took a $100M lead. A big chunk of it came in the opening weekend ($158M vs $77M), but TSK actually led every day to that point

Now?

Through 24th Day
$441,628,497 TDK
$429,040,000 Avatar

Avatar has chopped $88M off the lead, and closes to just $12.5M of TDK's pace.

I didn't think TDK's $533M was possible. I'm not so sure anymore. If Avatar pulls in $30M next week, which seems very possible given those Sat-Sun numbers this weekend, that's bets are off on that one.

Numbers to watch coming out of next weekend: TDK was at $471M. Avatar needs to make $42M to catch its pace. That looks *likely*. If it gets ahead of TDK, because it's still making more per day and weekend, it's hard to see it falling back off TDK's rate: there aren't really any spots where TDK gets a bump other than Labor day, and it's not off the charts.

In contrast, Avatar may just get an Best Picture nomination now that there are 10 slots.

I don't think Titanic's number is reachable. But with phenoms, who knows when things end.

John

[jdw]

Avatar's actually were even better than the estimate:

$48,500,000 Estimate
$50,306,217 Actuals

It will be the #3 domestic by the end of next weekend:

Mojo: Domestic Grosses

A little less than $11M behind TDK's pace.

John

[jdw]

5th Weekends
$41,300,000 Avatar
$30,011,034 Titanic
$22,896,967 The Sixth Sense
$18,859,021 SW: TPM
$16,379,293 TDK

I keep saying: Staggering.

It's shredding TDK's pace. It finally "caught" TDK's pace on Saturday after that $100M "lead" that TDK had after their respective 8th day (see post above). It came out of the weekend $20M ahead of TDK's pace, and Monday is MLK Day which should see it do reasonably well.

Domestic Top 3
$600,788,188 Titanic
$533,345,358 TDK
$491,767,000 Avatar

Avatar could get to $500M by the end of Monday when we see the actuals on Tuesday, especially if it does better than the estimates like last weekend. If not, it should get there Tuesday. $42M to TDK and #2 all-time... it *could* get there by the end of next weekend depending upon how much it continues to hold.

Here is what's a little frightening now. At the end of *next* weekend in terms of pace, TDK was at $489,416,885. That means it still had $43,928,473 left in the tank. Avatar is outpacing TDK every weekday by about $1.5M a day, and beating it like a drum on the weekends. There really isn't any reason to think that if Avatar tops TDK by the end of next weekend that it won't have *more* than $44M left in the tank. Possible quite a bit more.

$533M + $44M = $577M

I think we're getting very close to the spot where "Avatar Topping Titanic" becomes a very strong possibility. If it's still over $30M next weekend, and the weekdays here remain good, it might be as early as next weekend. If not then, the weekend after that should tell the story.

Oscar nominations are coming up. If it's on the list, you can see the advertising campaign and the push to get to #1.

Mojo's Worldwide number is now up to $1.6B, with Titanic at $1.84B. That one is looking likely as well. There's not a massive slowing down in it's overseas haul. It's pulled in about $600M world wide over the past two weeks.

I wonder what type of cut Cammeron got from this one. Titanic made him ridiculously rich. This could be silly money.

John

[eron]

Isn't it rumoured the technology and development of Avatar alone cost them $400M?

[jdw]

Haven't bothered looking at costs. If the number is right, if the thing bombed it would have been brutal. On the other hand. $1.6B pays off a lot of production/developmental costs. :)

John

[eron]

Also, is Titanic adjusted for inflation?

I wonder if they could figure out a way to adjust rising ticket prices as well...

[jdw]

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

Older movies are extremely tricky. I seem to recall that Godfather in 1972/73 "broke the record" of GWTW. Except:

$198,676,459 GWTW
$158,671,368 Sound of Music
$134,966,411 Godfather

It's possible that sales weren't well tracked.

Exorcist & The Sting broke GF's record the following year. Problem is that The Sting was still behind GWTW.

Possible issues is that the team "rentals" was often used back then, and people may have come up with the Current Figures for those old movies by taking a look at the grosses (or simply estimating them). I don't know if MGM ever released detailed audits of their Grosses for GWTW.

Anyway...

From Jaws to the present is a better set of Apples to Apples comps.

Even then, what's funny is that back then we thought Jaws *destroyed* the Exorcist's record, and then of course SW killed Jaws dead. But it you look at Jaws, it isn't a massive win over Exorcist.

John

[jdw]

5th weekend estimate got pushed up to $42.8M (another $1.5M), while MLK Day added in an estimated $11.8M... which is ridiculous.

Up to $505M.

It's now $31.9M ahead of TDK's pace at a time when TDK had $60M left in the tank. TDK is coming up on a $10M weekend. Avatar should pull in at least $20M this coming weekend, and even that would be it's first 50%+ weekend drop.

It probably will pass TDK this weekend. And like I said above, it probably will be time come next Monday when a safe prediction on it topping Titanic can be made. I suspect folks who study this have already leaned that direction, though what it's doing is so off the charts for recent movies that it's hard to do many projections: it's breaking even the usual extreme "good" models of the past decade.

John

[eron]

[jdw]

I believe those are domestic numbers.

Again, I'm not entirely sure how these number changed from how they were reported back in the early 70s. I'll see if I have a Guiness or other record book from the mid-70s that has some numbers. You'll see that they will be quite different.

Some Disney movies have been re-released, hence the jump in box office for them. GWTW hasn't been majorly re-released in the theaters from the 70s on. Its re-issues in 1989 and 1998 pulled in chump change: $9M total. Exorcist pulled in a decent $40M in 2000, but it and The Sting where in the "$80M" range when Jaws broke their record.

Again, I think there was a difference in how box office was reported. My recollection is that the term used was "rentals". That's consistent with The-Numbers.com over here:

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1939/0GWTW.php

Rentals: $79,375,080

And that's sort of the number that I remember: it was in the high $70M range that was topped by Godfather, The Sting and Exorcist going past $80M. That's also consistent with this:

And this:

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0031381/business

[jdw]

$36,000,000, down just 15.9%.


6th Weekends
$36,000,000 Avatar
$25,238,720 Titanic
$16,511,464 Sixth Sense
$16,346,568 Mrs. Doubtfire
$15,642,073 Aladdin
$15,588,776 Toy Story

Basically a bunch of 90s movies.

You have to go down to Blind Side ($11.5M for 13th place) to find a movie from 2001 and beyond. 17-20 were the collection of 2001+ movies with wicked legs:

$10,605,106 Passion of Chist
$10,542,424 TDK
$10,405,731 Shrek 1
$10,372,316 My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Avatar was *3.5* times the level of strong legs movies of this era. Wow.

All-Time Domestic
$600,788,188 Titanic
$552,797,000 Avatar
$533,345,358 TDK

Passed TDK on Saturday.

Pace Through 38 Days
$552,797,000 Avatar
$489,416,885 TDK

TDK has $43.9M left, which if matches gets Avatar close to Titanic. But that number is meaningless given Avatar just topped the weekend of TDK by 3.5 times.

At this pace, Avatar could top Titanic by more than $50M. $36M this weekend sure has the feel of a movie that has $100M+ left in the tank.

Worldwide
$1,842.9M Titanic
$1,836.1M Avatar

That one will go on Monday, either when clearly data for the weekend comes in or simply by what's earned on Monday. Obviously it's topped what Titanic made overseas. $2B movie, no doubt.

John

[eron]

James Cameron will have grossed 3.6 Billion worldwide on two films with flimsy scripts. The second movie he did it during the "OMG INTERNET KILLED THE CINEMA" era.

James Cameron deserves a giant gold statue of himself posing like Leo on the Titanic with Navi legs when you enter Hollywood.