20th Century Fox’s “Avatar” remains immovable at the top of the charts for its seventh powerhouse weekend at the domestic box office. The film has also proven its reign in international box office as it takes home $95 million for this weekend alone, a minor 12% slip from its previous record. Garnering $30 million for this weekend, James Cameron’s film easily surpassed and knocked off Warner Bros.’ “Edge of Darkness” starring Mel Gibson off the top spot with only $17.1 million.
The R-rated “Edge of Darkness” tells the story of a Boston police officer discovering a corporate cover-up while investigating the questionable death of his daughter. Packed with action, surprisingly the film drew in almost equal attention from both genders generating a 53% male and 47% female audience.
Dan Fellman, representative of domestic distribution for Warner Bros. states the studio’s surprise saying, “You would assume that Mel would now have an older audience. But I think the audience was not only older, but broader.”
Though “Edge of Darkness” engaged in a thorough campaign and widespread appeal before it opened this weekend, it still wasn’t able to top the charisma “Avatar” had to moviegoers.
“Avatar” currently appears in 3,074 locations recording a per-screen average of $9,759. Notably 179 of these screens feature IMAX presentation accounting for about 21% of the film’s overall domestic income. In the international scene meanwhile, the best markets are in Japan with $6.8 million and Italy with $10.9 million. Currently the domestic intake of “Avatar” has already reached $549.5 million plus a whopping $1.45 billion internationally. The total gross for the film now stands past the massive $2 billion mark.
Last weekend alone, “Avatar” had already taken down “Titanic” record in foreign revenues. As of January 25, the newest picture from James Cameron became the all-time highest grosser worldwide. The only barrier and record left untouched is the domestic figure still held by Cameron’s first blockbuster, “Titanic”. Currently, “Avatar” is still $6 million away from the record of $600.8 million set in 1998. However with the daily average of $3.18 million, Fox speculates the breakthrough will happen anytime soon this coming week.
Chris Aronson, senior VP of domestic distribution for Fox gives his comments on the reign of “Avatar” stating, “Like everything else about this movie, it defies all speculation. I do believe there are still a lot of people who haven’t seen the film yet.”
With the Oscar nominations coming in at Tuesday, “Avatar” is expected to dominate the technical categories and would most probably earn a place in the picture and director category as well.
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