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SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM: Now that 20th Century Fox’s Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all time (not adjusted for inflation or higher 3D ticket prices), it passed the $2 billion mark in worldwide grosses and remained No. 1 at the weekend box office for the 7th straight week. Today, after just 45 days of release, James Cameron’s sci-fi epic reached $2.039 billion. The pic’s runaway success has answered all its critics, so there’s not much more to say except, Wow! It made $7.5M Friday from 3,074 plays and $14M Saturday for another $30M weekend — an amazing -14% hold despite a declining theater count. That’s a new $594.2M domestic cume. The pic should pass Titanic‘s record of $600.8M this week.
Here’s the run-down of IMAX’s 5th weekend of Avatar. The giant screen juggernaut generated another $6.0 mil domestically this weekend (-10%) on 179 screens; this represents approx 21% of the pictures overall domestic take. Hollywood.com reports IMAX’s domestic cume for Avatar stands at $97M and will pass $100M this week. Overseas, IMAX generated $4.3M (-3%) on 83 screens. As of Sunday night, the IMAX international cume will be $56M. This puts the global total as of tonight at $153M. The only remaining questions are: Will Avatar make it 8 weeks in a row as #1? And will it win the Best Picture Oscar? Stay tuned.
Way more questions surrounded the Warner Bros-distributed Edge Of Darkness starring Mel Gibson in his big screen comeback in front of the camera after an 8-year hiatus. All week Industry chatter focused on whether the director, unquestionably brilliant behind the camera, can regain the star status he enjoyed before that July 2006 drunken anti-semitic rant damaged his public image. But how this new pic performs may relate more to Mel’s present day status as an aging action star whose appeal now lies mainly with older males. Produced and financed by GK Films, the Martin Campbell-directed Edge Of Darkness on Friday debuted exactly as Warner Bros expected. It received a “B+” CinemaScore and opened to $5.6 million Friday and $7.4M Saturday (+30% – maybe Mel fans who spent Friday night at Shabbos dinner were first in line Saturday) from a wide release of 3,066 theaters. That’s a $17.5M weekend. “We outperformed every vendor who projects via tracking,” the WB exec said. But was that lowered expectation good enough? Well, a younger and scandal-less Gibson opened the R-rated crime story Payback to $21M back in 1999.
Ugh, is all I can say about all those nauseating ads run by Disney for When In Rome. Under the guise of romantic comedy, it’s yet more treacly trash — this time starring former TV stars Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel. The pic debuted to $4.4 million Friday and $5.1M Saturday (+18%) from 2,456 dates to end the weekend with $12M.
Lastly, I’ve received puzzled queries why CBS Films all week didn’t release numbers for its first flop Extraordinary Measures which Friday eked out only an embarrassing $715K (-64%) and Saturday $1.1M (-58%) from 2,549 runs. There’s this weird tradition in Hollywood that independents don’t release daily box office figures and just report weekend and weekly totals. ”Supposedly, it goes back to the days when box office was manually gathered so it was only done twice a week,” one distribution expert tells me. “But now that there are electronic means for gathering the data, this practice is silly.” Especially for a division of a Big Media company.
Here’s the Top Ten based on Friday’s and Saturday’s numbers (to be refined):
1. AVATAR (Fox) Week 7 [3,074]
Friday $7.5M, Saturday $14M, Weekend $30M, Est Cume $594.4M
2. EDGE OF DARKNESS (GK/Warner Bros) NEW [3,066]
Friday $5.6M, Saturday $7.4M, Weekend $17.5M
3. WHEN IN ROME (Disney) NEW [2,456]
Friday $4.4M, Saturday $5.1M, Weekend $12M.
4. TOOTH FAIRY (Fox) Week 2 [3,345]
Friday $2.2M (-37%), Saturday $4.7M, Weekend $10M, Est Cume $26.1M
5. BOOK OF ELI (Warner Bros) Week 3 [3,075]
Friday $2.3M, Saturday $3.7M, Weekend $8.0M, Est Cume $73.6M
6. LEGION (Sony) Week 2 [2,476]
Friday $2.0M (-70%), Saturday $2.9M, Weekend $6.6M, Est Cume $28.4M
7. LOVELY BONES (Paramount) Week 8 [2,638]
Friday $1.3M, Saturday $2.0M, Weekend $4.4M, Est Cume $37.7M
8. SHERLOCK HOLMES (Warner Bros) Week 6 [2,250]
Friday $1.1M, Saturday $1.9M, Weekend $4.0M, Est Cume $197.1M
9. ALVIN & THE CHIPMUNKS: THE SQUEALQUEL (Fox) Week 6 [2,526]
Friday $815K, Saturday $1.9M, Weekend $4M, Est Cume $209.2M
10. IT’S COMPLICATED (Universal) Week 6 [2,096]
Friday $950K, Saturday $1.7M, Weekend $3.5M, Est Cume $103.8M
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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1) Surely ‘they’ must track and have records of the number of tickets sold?? No one would have to worry about inflation/exchange rates/etc if they just looked at how many people bought a ticket – not just how much those tickets cost.
2) Discounting Avatar’s boost from 3D revenues disregards the fact that people are willing to dispose of extra money to see this movie in 3D despite the difficult economic condition (and 3D being a relatively unestablished/work-in-progress technology).
OK – we’re still debating GWTW’s grosses 70 years later – will we still be talking about AVATAR at all? Grosses are irrelevant to stories that stand the test of time. Not sure auds fifty years from now will be forgiving of AVATAR’s (which will seem at the time) cheesy effects to focus on the story and characters.
It’s great to see Mel Gibson the actor back. I couldn’t care less about his crimes of opinion or occasional over-indulgences (I recall he was a fan of eating raw meat, I’m surprised PETA isn’t whining about Mel, too). On the other hand, I wish he’d picked a story that hasn’t been done more times than Avatar’s. Edge of Darkness is an absolute must see – when it comes out on BluRay.
I agree why is Rome lost 11 million is hardly bad. Its quite good
.
If you want to measure a movie’s influence, try figuring out the number of people who have seen it, not the grosses. Remember in 1939 that ticket prices were very low compared to our today. One million dollars in grosses in 1939 probably means that over one million people saw the movie. In 2010, one million in grosses means that around 125,000 people saw the movie at an average of $8 a head. Even fewer if we count the 3-D audience.
The average ticket price then was around twenty to twenty five cents although GWTW was distributed at a premium, so a million dollar gross represented much more than a million people.
“The pic’s runaway success has answered all its critics…” What critics? People spend a lot of money on French fries too but that doesn’t make them haute cuisine.
Let’s try this one:
“Transformers 2′s runaway success has answered all its critics…”
Cameron has said himself that he enjoys the business of large, mass market movies….french-fry-films, if you will.
every director dreams of this kind of success, a pity Cameron does it with derivative, terribly written material that appeals to manchildren
The adjusting for “higher prices” when comparing BOX OFFICE is silly. That essentially presumes that any old film could increase its price without affecting its sales. If that’s true, then theaters and distributors are being stupid for not maximizing their sales — I’m betting that that is not the case.
Adjusting for inflation is, of course, fair — but let’s remember Titanic slides down too. Of course, so what? No one will ever catch Gone With the Wind — but that has a lot to do with less competition from (i) other films and (ii) TV and NO COMPETITION from DVDs and VCRs. Different worlds and universes.
What Avatar is doing is damned impressive and well fairly unprecedented — in the same way that what Star Wars, Gone With the Wind and Titanic did during their own time periods.
Nikki’s just being cranky…
Again, from a purely statistical analysis perspective, inflation is a very simplistic approach that doesn’t take into account SO many other factors such as disposable income, other types of “modern” entertainment, etc. Inflation adjusted, however, inadequately explains what movie did and didn’t make “more” money.
Seats sold alone doesn’t either. If I charge 100 per seat, I’m going to sell less seats than if I charge 20. Combine this with a different “experience” (2D vs 3D) and things start to get very, very complicated. This is one of the reasons why comparing apples vs oranges probably doesn’t really make any sense.
Just appreciate the fact that certain movies stand above others of their time and leave it at that. It’s somewhat like asking “Who was better, the 1927 New York Yankess or the 95-96 Chicago Bulls?” Both were great teams, but they came from different eras and…..different sports.
Other than using the “adjusting for inflation” argument, the post on January 30, 2010 @ 10:48 am was (to me) the most well thought out I’ve seen.
Edge of Darkness made me comatose. I came to see Mel going rogue in a vigilante quest to avenge his daughter’s murder, and I mostly got a lot of boring scenes of an eco-terrorist conspiracy being perpetrated by corporate bigwigs. I think Mel might be better suited to stay behind the lens from here on out; he just looked old, bloated and disinterested here, and his cringe-inducing attempt at a Boston accent didn’t help matters. A disappointment on dual fronts since it also marked Martin Campbell’s return to filmmaking after his Casino Royale triumph. The joke was on me for expecting anything good, because the trailer looked generic beyond belief and in that regard the film delievered completely.
Also, I don’t want to make any brash predictions about Avatar’s reign at #1 going down next week or anything, but I think we should keep a watchful eye on Dear John. That movie looks like it has sleeper hit written all over it, just like Amanda Seyfried has “America’s Sweetheart” potential written all over her. I think there’s a high probability of it exceeding whatever the tracking figures indicate.
I can’t believe some people are still saying that Avatar’s box office success is all because of the higher 3D ticket prices. Avatar is getting strong word of mouth. Just look at it’s drops. It is averaging less than 20% drops each weak. Most movies including all the recent releases are dropping at a normal 50% or more. Evan The Dark Knight which had a slow decline was dropping like 40% at this point in it’s life cycle. 3D ticket prices don’t explain low drops.
Inflation and 3d films existed before Avatar. Remember that no film could beat Titanic for 13 years. Actually no film came close really in that time. The closest was Return of the King at 1.1 billion.
To AVATAR’s credit, it was the first “serious” 3-D film (not “Spy Kids 3-D” or the cheesy horror flicks) and the first one in IMAX 3-D. It really is the first, the images are truly stunning. Audiences are reacting like that of the era of “the Great Train Robbery.”
You ‘adjusted for inflation’ people make me crazy. You open a can of worms that simply makes your assertions pointless. Why are you not adjusting for population (USA and World)? Adjustment for other media available at the time? Adjustment for production, release and marketing expenses? Adjustment for re-release? Adjustment for disposable income as it relates to entertainment? Adjustment for currency fluctuations worldwide? Adjustment for the price of parking and popcorn which at todays higher prices may limit excursions from the home? Adjustment for theaters relative distance to residential areas, particularly suburbia? Adjustment for ticket price relative to average wealth and earnings? Adjustment for gasoline prices? Adjustment for terrorism awareness and risk aversion? Adjustment for internet ease of ticket purchase combined with cost of internet access? Adjustment for public transportation costs? Adjustment for increased shoe prices for those who walked to the theater? Adjustment for 3D glasses manufacturing? Adjust yourself.
Because one test of a film’s popularity is how many people saw it in theaters in spite of other factors. In the end, it may well be unfair to compare films from distant eras, but the fact remains that more people went to see some films in greater numbers than others, and moviegoers in other eras had other ways of occupying their time if they so chose, and other things keeping them from watching films they ultimately chose not to see.
Yes. It is one (1) test and it doesn’t take into account many other factors.
Hooray for Simon (January 30, 2010 @ 12:08 pm)!!!! A simple minded approach to “inflation” is approximately equal to a personal opinion. Just state it as such.
Nice approach Simon. This is a multivariate explanation and if you think you can figure it out, you should start looking at how apples and oranges are different at the genetic level, analyze the information you’ve collected, and then tell everyone which is #1.
Good luck.
Amazing hold. I am expecting some higher actuals, although based on the last two weeks, it seems the estimates have been higher…but Saturday will be a better indication of the weekend…
i think 2 billion will be crossed by sunday… how?
http://mosic.wordpress.com/2010/01/12/avatar-the-numbers/
I am still stunned that the Squeakquel is over $200 million dollars. I was forced to sit through it and it looked like it was out together in a week with no thought whatsoever. But my daughters loved it, especially the girl chipmunks, and I guess that is all that matters.
It is kind of like the old Babe Ruth argument. Yeah, Babe Ruth hit a lot of home runs, but would he be able to hit so many home runs today, going up against today’s players?
mel gibson is an anti-semitic bigot.
but the fact that warner bros is happily releasing the film —and he has a new one at Universal –says more about those executives than gibson himself.
would they be producing his films if he had had an anti-black rant…
of course not.
bigotry is bigotry.
What about Miley Cyrus? Would she still have a career if she made caricatures of big lips and broad noses? No, don’t think so. As you said, bigotry is bigotry. Except when it comes to pathetic stereotypes of Asians, Indians, Native Americans and whoever else.
Avatar has not been re-released many time like some of those other movie. Let’s also not forget higher ticket prices will also stop some people from seeing it more than once. The higher prices go both ways here.
As a Jewish woman, I’m glad Mel Gibson has failure. He humiliated all Hebrew people and I am still upset.
as a non Jewish person I am also glad Mel Gibson’s movie didn’t do so great. He is an angry and bitter bigot and needs to go away for a long time and get some help.
Get over it. He’s a crazy drunk. It’s not like he fed quaaludes to a 13 year old girl and raped her.
Gibson humiliated himself by being a bigot, idot, drunk,etc. The only people that came off looking bad from the whole Mel fiasco is Mel. By his own hand.
Valentines Day will be number 1 in two weeks. Not because it is good. Just because women are silly and will buy into the date night on v day bs. Avatar will finally fall from the number one spot.
“Valentines Day” will be #3, at best. It looks awful and it’s gotten awful reviews.
How can you know on Friday evening/Saturday morning when you still have 2 days left of the weekend what movie will be #1??
It’s called established trend lines and projection, among other things.
And as you can see – it’s always correct.
The heck? Just noticed that TLB theater count INCREASED from last week despite 50% drop which shows that even teen girls can`t be fooled past opening weekend. All other movies, including staying powerhouse Avatar, lost theaters. But somehow, Paramount managed to get more theaters for their free-falling “stunning success”. Stranger things happened, I know, but theater expansion without demand is really strange.
Many are missing the point here
back in the days of GWTW, there were only an handful of movies released a year thus repeat watching was a norm
Avatar and the likes of movies released past decade deserved the credits of making tons of millions with all the competitions and higher ticket prices
“back in the days of GWTW, there were only an handful of movies released a year thus repeat watching was a norm”
Huh???? In 1939 many wonderful movies were released and ticket prices averaged 23 cents, people went to moves all the time. You must not watch any old movies because there are tons of fabulous movies that were released back then. 1939 is considered the high point of Hollywood movies, not only was GWTW released that year, but also The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, Dark Victory, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and more. There were hugely popular serials, like Buck Rogers and The Lone Ranger- kids went to the movies and stayed for double and triple features. There was plenty of wonderful movie competition for Gone With the Wind, it’s success is truly remarkable.
http://boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_in_film
Armand is (IMO) correct. One can’t just “correct” quantitatively for qualitatively different times. In the extreme (and for those who like the genre), picture a post apocalypse period where there is one projector and a few cameras……now who’s #1? None of the comparisons from 70 (or even 40) years ago make any sense. Movies are for you to enjoy (and for a select few to make a loooooooooot of money).
Actually i was wondering exactly how much one ticket was for GWTW in it’s era? Was it $10 for the “adjusted value” today, or maybe $15? If so then we cannot blame Avatar got its boxoffice success because of the higher 3D tickets, right?
Without tv, dvd or bd, computer and internet, pirate and download, xbox or ps3, nba or f1, theatre was the only place people could enjoy their eyes and ears back to GWTW’s age, (maybe we need to count newspaper and broadcast in, haha), right?
i dont think 16 million is a Failure good to see Mel back in action and will be getting Edge of Darkness on Blue Ray
Look for The Beaver with Mel and Jodie Foster coming out in August to perform exceptionally well. I see that as Mel’s “real comeback”.
The Edge of Darkness was just, well too dark for many people, and there was no way it would it ever overtake Avatar.
Why hasn’t anyone pointed out Legion’s much-deserved 70% drop?
“When Gone with the wind was released and re-released, forget VHS and DVD, even a color TV was non-existent.
And means of entertainment itself were limited. No billion TV shows, no wii, no xbox, no watching videos on youtube and hulu…
Using the inflation logic is being a bit unfair to Avatar.”
second that.
When GWTW was released, there was no TV, no home entertainment market, no games industry, there was not much of anything entertainment wise that could be counted as any sort of competition. Count in the fact that films had much longer runs back then
Ummm…but that was also a COMPLETELY different era.
Yes, when GWTW was released, there was much less competition. This is because there was also a much smaller market for such competition.
Kids didn’t spend all their free time discussing movies or doing whatever they could to help promote them. People in their twenties and thirties didn’t sit around arguing about a particular film’s box office. And moviegoing in general wasn’t quite the “necessity” it’s become in our modern culture.
To even try and compare the success of a 2010 film to something from the 30s, 40s, or even 70s is absurd. Look at how much differently film is marketed and treated in today’s world. Movies weren’t even released nationwide on the same opening date until the mid-70s.
They also didn’t have their records broken with each passing year. This is why box office records became newsworthy in the first place: It was a fairly rare occurence. Yet how many films have “shattered all records” in the past few years alone?
I know it’s nice to think that our generation has just produced the greatest movie success of all time, but such claims require a serious lack of historical context.
“They also didn’t have their records broken with each passing year. This is why box office records became newsworthy in the first place: It was a fairly rare occurence. Yet how many films have “shattered all records” in the past few years alone?”
Well, one in the past decade…
Well, one in the past decade…
If we’re going to get technical, which film are you referring to that has broken every single box office record in the past decade? (Including things like biggest 3-day, 5-day, etc.)
Perhaps I should have said, how many films have been touted as “shattering all kinds of records” in the past few years alone. When The Dark Knight appeared, everyone acted like it was the Second Coming. Now look at how many of its records remain.
It was a similar situation with sequels of Harry Potter, Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, etc. Of the 10 highest-grossing domestic films, 9 of them are from the past decade. Yet how many people actually consider the previous decade’s blockbusters to be among the greatest films ever made? They were primarily fantasy cgi-fests geared towards attracting the lowest common denominator.
The bottom line is that inflation is hardly the most significant thing to consider when looking at old blockbusters. Today’s moviegoers actually care about box office gross- particularly those under the age of 30. This just wasn’t the case back in the 30s. (It wasn’t even that much of an issue back in the 80s.) No one sat around talking about internal multipliers or passionately arguing about grosses. They certainly didn’t view them as a way to validate a hobby, as so many do today.
And even then, we’re just talking about how earlier films were regarded domestically. Today’s global market is light years ahead of what those original blockbusters had. Films didn’t debut nationwide, much less worldwide. Even if studios had wanted to pursue markets like China, Japan, or Russia, how passionately would they have really been about a US film?
None of this is intended to be a rant against Avatar. I honestly have no feelings either way towards the film, but obviously the average fanboy does. It just always amazes me how people act as though comparing earlier blockbusters is simply a matter of adjusting for inflation. And if you’re able to crunch the numbers enough, then the latest blockbuster represents the greatest cultural event of all time. But even Titanic represents a more impressive box office feat, simply because it occurred while the internet was still in its infancy.
And let’s not kid ourselves, it’s no coincidence that the runaway box office of the past decade coincided with the rise of the internet. The latter has proven to be an enormous boon to studios and the way they are able to aggressively promote their films.
You could argue the competition was more intense, back in the 1930′s. There was less segmentation, more broad 4 quadrant movies, more studios, more releases. True there was less competition from DVD releases of decades past, TV, games, etc. But there was also stunning novelty, sound in movies being only 10 years old, and still new. Color even newer.
There was also the issue of the Depression, which made movies, often cheap and air-conditioned (and the only air-conditioned places around) THE entertainment outlet.
There’s also the issue of cultural success. More than seventy years later, everyone knows who said “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Who will remember a line of dialog a year later from AVATAR? Who even remembers anything from TITANIC? That sort of cultural artifact only comes from reaching all four quadrants (young/old, male/female) over generations.