Box Office Results and Weekly Movie News: 'Avatar' Soars Past 'Star Wars'

Movies coming out this week!

Legion - God has lost his faith in humankind, causing him to send his legion of angels to bring on the Apocalypse. A remote diner becomes the battleground, where the Archangel Michael (Bettany) bands together with a group of strangers, though Michael's true focus is to protect a pregnant waitress whose unborn child is humankind's hope for survival.

Tooth Fairy - A bad deed on the part of a tough minor-league hockey player (Johnson) results in an unusual sentence: He must serve one week as a real-life tooth fairy.

Extraordinary Measures - A drama centered on the efforts of John and Aileen Crowley (Fraser and Russell) to find a researcher (Ford) to develop a potential cure for their two children's rare genetic disorder.

Movies coming out on DVD and Blu-ray!

The Invention of Lying
Whiteout
Pandorum
Gamer

Box Office results for the weekend!

1 Avatar$41.3 M

2 The Book of Eli$31.6 M

3 The Lovely Bones $17.0 M

4 Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel $11.5 M

5 Sherlock Holmes $9.8 M

6 The Spy Next Door $9.7 M

7 It's Complicated $7.6 M

8 Leap Year $5.8 M

9 The Blind Side $5.5 M

10 Up in the Air $5.4 M

"Avatar" has become the first film in 10 years to be the No. 1 film in America for 5 weeks in a row (last one was "The Sixth Sense"). Can it become the first film in the past 12 years to stay No. 1 for six weeks? Ironically, the last film to do that was James Cameron's previous film, "Titanic."

And this past weekend also made "Avatar" shoot past "Star Wars" as the No. 3 movie on the all-time domestic box office charts. Worldwide, 20th Century Fox's "Avatar" lifted its total to $1.6 billion, second only to 1997's "Titanic," at $1.8 billion.

"Avatar" topped the original "Star Wars", which took in $460.9 million domestically in its original run and several reissues over the years. But factoring in today's higher admission prices, "Star Wars" remains well ahead of "Avatar" on actual number of tickets sold.

"Avatar" now is closing in on "The Dark Knight," No. 2 domestically with $533.3 million. After that, only Cameron's "Titanic" at $600 million will remain ahead of "Avatar" domestically.

Even if "Avatar" sets a new revenue record, it's doubtful it would sell as many tickets as "Titanic" did because of today's higher admission prices.

"Titanic" sold about 130 million tickets domestically based on average ticket prices of about $4.60 back in 1997 and 1998. Based on today's average domestic price of about $7.50, "Avatar" would be at around half that mark.

Average admission prices for "Avatar" likely run even higher, given that much of its business comes from a 3-D version, which costs a few dollars extra to see.

Moving on to other films that aren't dominating the box office...

"Book of Eli" opened well and will have to continue along its path to make a profit from its production budget. Chan's "Spy Next Door" stalled in theaters as parents chose "Chipmunks" instead.

Speaking of "Chipmunks," the sequel has nearly made $200 million worldwide, more than "Sherlock Holmes," and also had a smaller budget than "Sherlock Holmes." Probably has to do with tons of kids wanting to see "Chipmunks" instead of "Holmes" and the parents obliging the requests.

Other films will continue to fall by the wayside has January begins to come to a close. The main question is how long will "Avatar" stay on top? With its recent Golden Globe win of Best Drama and Best Director, will more people go see the film (or see it again)? Will the film beat out "Titanic" and become the highest-grossing film of all time?

Only time will tell...but you really have to look at the ticket numbers since the revenue made now is different from 12 years ago due to inflation.
Source: USA Today