James Cameron’s epic 3D blockbuster Avatar appears to have been slowed in the United States by severe snowstorms on the East coast, opening to an estimated $73 million USD in domestic sales, good for the second largest December launch of all-time. The movie also had the third largest Friday opening of all-time, at $27 million.
‘I Am Legend’ opened to $77 million in December 2007.
Worldwide, the movie has already made an estimated $232 million, almost surpassing the movie’s gigantic budget.
Avatar is said to be the fourth most expensive film to be ever made, with an official budget of $237 million. Ahead of it are “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” at $300 million, “Spider-Man 3” at $258 million, and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” at $250 million. Marketing/advertising figures for the epic are said to surpass $120 million.
Sales will undoubtedly be compared to James Cameron’s last movie, Titanic, which spent 6 months in theaters bringing in $600 million domestic and $1.8 billion globally.
Result for: pirates of the caribbean
Warner Bros. is reporting that the blockbuster smash hit The Dark Knight has surpassed the $1 billion USD milestone for worldwide box office sales, becoming only the fourth movie to ever do so.
The highly rated sequel has now made $1.001 billion USD since its release last July and sits behind Titanic ($1.84 billion), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.12 billion) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($1.07 billion) for highest all-time grossing movies.
Sitting in fifth place is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone which almost hit the milestone but fell short at $974.7 million.
According to Box Office Mojo, $533.1 million was grossed in United States theaters with the remaining coming from nations around the world.
Warner also added that The Dark Knight is the highest-grossing 2-D IMAX movie of all time, with a gross of $65 million worldwide. The movie is also the record holder for most Blu-ray sales on launch day, launch week, and all-time.
Result for: pirates of the caribbean
Although Blu-ray officially won the HD format war last week, in a pretty funny ironic twist, “American Gangster”,an HD DVD-only Title was the top selling HD disc for the week, beating out new Blu-ray releases.
American Gangster, a Universal release, was released on the same day that Toshiba announced it was canning HD DVD support but still topped Neilsen VideoScan’s charts for the week, beating out Blu-ray’s top release “Michael Clayton” by a 2:1 margin.
However, there were no other HD DVD titles in the top 10 and Blu-ray cruised to an easy overall victory for the week, with 77 percent of all HD disc sales.
The rest of the week’s chart (thanks to HD Digest)
1. American Gangster (HD DVD); INDEX: 100
2. Michael Clayton (Blu-ray); INDEX: 62.24
3. The Rock (Blu-ray); INDEX: 27.26
4. Cars (Blu-ray); INDEX: 26.18
5. We Own the Night (Blu-ray); INDEX: 24.29
6. Planet Earth (Blu-ray); INDEX: 22.69
7. Con Air (Blu-ray); INDEX: 21.37
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