Today is a crucial day for Avatar box office watchers. The holidays are over and the reality of a ‘regular’ Monday at the box office is about to set in. How “regular” will it be?
Well, first some perspective.
- On the first Monday after the New Years Weekend, Titanic dropped 66% from $8M on Sunday, to $3m on Monday. That’s Titanic.
- Return of the King dropped 68% from $7m to $2m.
- Meet the Fockers dropped 61% from $11m to 4.4M
So where will Avatar land.
In an effort to divine some anecdotal info, I went to Arclight Cinemas website and checked out how advance ticket sales are going for the 7pm and 7:4o pm shows tonight. I checked at 4:30 PM — so 2-3 hours before the show. Here is the diagram that came up showing which seats have been sold and which are available:
Here’s 7pm at the Cineramadome
And here’s 7:40pm in a smaller theater
Not bad for a Monday.
So, Avatar’s Sunday was $17,381,129. That means a 66% drop would be $5m. A 60% deop would be 6.9M and that would equal the lowest drop among the holiday overachievers surveyed above.
I’m going to say $7m. My weekend prediction was pretty good — I predicted $68m and it did $68.3. I’m not so sure about this prediction but … whatever, gotta make one. We’ll see.
