Friday, 12 February 2010 11:08 | and posted in News
Avatar has now become the highest grossing movie of all time and the first movie in history to break the $2 billion mark at the box office.
This is incredible for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is only the 5th film to ever take more than a $1 billion dollars worldwide. Secondly, it has earned more than the third and fourth highest grossing movies combined (LOTR: Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest in case you're wondering). And thirdly it took a mere 47 days to beat Titanic's 252 days $1.84 billion cinematic worldwide gross!!
Avatar's now been out for 8 weeks and has surpassed Titanic's previous worldwide gross by $400,000, so far claiming $2.2 billion at the box office. With the potential to have another 100 days showing in cinemas and with the buzz surrounding its 9 Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, who knows how high Avatar's gross will be once it's run in the cinema is over?
Of course, a lot of this is down to the higher cost of 3D tickets, with cinemas now adding a premium on ticket prices for 3D movies. Unfortunately, the movie industry does not record attendance figures, just dollars. However, taking into account ticket prices, the estimate is that 128 million people saw Titanic in the cinema while Avatar is a distant second with 60 million having seen it. So far. So while this figure is half Titanic's audience, it is still higher than the number who go see the biggest blockbusters in their entire cinematic runs and with many months still to go.