HuffPost Weekend Box Office Review: Avatar Crosses $2 Billion Worldwide

Avatar won the box office derby for the seventh straight weekend, taking the record for the biggest seventh weekend gross ($30 million) from Titanic ($25 million). Dropping just 14%, the unstoppable monster has now grossed $594 million, meaning it will cross Titanic’s $600 million gross in the next 2-3 days, perhaps on the very day (Tuesday the 2nd) that the Oscar nominations are announced. Early last week, it surpassed Titanic’s worldwide box office gross to become the world’s highest-grossing movie. This weekend it crossed the seemingly unfathomable $2 billion mark worldwide. You can babble all you want about inflation, 3D and IMAX ticket prices, and what have you to your hearts’ content, but check out this little statistic: When Avatar reaches $2.239 billion, which it will in the next two or three weeks, it will have doubled the worldwide take of every other movie ever made except Titanic. It will also soon have an over $1 billion lead over any movie not directed by James Cameron. There’s not much more to say at this point than ‘wow’ and don’t make a sequel, so let’s move on…

Second place went to the Mel Gibson comeback vehicle Edge of Darkness. The Martin Campbell suspense thriller (remade from the director’s own 1985 BBC miniseries) pulled in $17 million. All eyes were focused on this one, as it was Gibson’s first starring role since 2002’s Signs. The opening isn’t terrific but it’s not terrible either. The film was advertised as a variation on Taken, but anyone paying attention to the preview could tell that it was more of a procedural investigation drama than a slam-bang thriller. The opening is right in line with Martin Campbell’s non-blockbuster debuts, just above the $16.3 million opening for 2005’s The Legend of Zorro and the $15.5 million debut of 2000’s Vertical Limit. Considering this picture cost $80 million (or about what the other two Campbell films cost), I’m sure Warner is hoping for something closer to Vertical Limit’s $69 million finish as opposed to The Legend of Zorro’s $46 million end total. Pardon the pun, but this was neither his brightest day nor his blackest night.

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