Thanks to Judi Murphy for sending this along. Very interesting:
It’s official: Just a few minutes ago Fox announced that Avatar has reached $601.2M thru Tuesday, February 2, and in so doing has surpassed Titanic’s unadjusted Box Office record take of $600.8M.
Be prepared for an announcement in the next few hours that Avatar has surpassed Titanic’s US Domestic Box Office Record of $600,788,188 based on Tuesday’s gross.
James Cameron’s Avatar led the field in this morning’s Oscar Nominations with 9 nominations,for best picture, best director, best original score, sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography, art direction, editing, and visual effects.
Avatar’s extraordinary “legs” showed themselves again, today, as the Monday actuals came out and Avatar was upgraded from the previously estimated $30M for the weekend, to$31,280,029 — a drop of only 10.5% from the previous weekend.
The Sunday morning weekend studio estimates are out and Fox has Avatar pulling in $30M in its 7th frame, soundly thumping Mel Gibson’s Edge of Darkness ($17m) and When in Rome ($13M). This represents a drop of only 14% from the previous weekend, and is $4M higher than the average Friday prediction by the experts 0f $26m. Our prediction of $30m, published Friday, seems to have been spot on.
Top honors at the Director’s Guild Award went to Kathryn Bigelog for “The Hurt Locker” == a win that certainly gives Bigelow the inside track for the Best Directing Oscar and makes The Hurt Locker a strong contender and possibly favorite for the Best Picture Oscar.
We’ve all been hearing how Tim Tebow, despite his extraordinary success at the University of Florida, may not be that hot a pro prospect. Until now I just flat didn’t believe it — I felt pretty certain that the naysayers are going to get their comeuppance — that Tebow’s leadership and learning skills and work ethic would carry him to success in the NFL. After watching him in today’s Senior Bowl, now I’m not so sure.
Based on studio estimates Avatar has won Friday’s box office derby with $7.5M, a drop of only 17% from the previous Friday and a number that tracks with Avatar reaching a figure of $29M for the weekend — which is $2-3M higher than the $26m that was the average predicted by box office prophets across the spectrum going into the weekend. $29M would dethrone Titanic for the highest 7th weekend ever (Titanic notched $25m) and would leave Avatar $29M short of Titanic’s US record of $600.7M.
Everyone’s writing about the high (or was it low) political theater that occurred yesterday when President Obama took questions and exchanged jabs with Republican house members in Baltimore. The fact that the exchange took place at all was rather unusual; that the cameras were allowed to stay in the room and record it turned the exchange into a memorable and possibly “teachable” moment
Even as the “Avatar is only #24 in terms of tickets sold” backlash to the “Avatar has overtaken Titanic” storyline develops, some balance and sanity has been injected by a Wall Street Journal piece by Carl Bialik in which the author discusses the difficulty in comparing films from different eras – and if you do compare them, by what metrics?
It’s Friday morning and the weekend box office predictions are out, with Avatar again expected to hold the top spot against newcomers Mel Gibson’s “Edge of Darkness” and the comedy flick “When in Rome”. The guessing game once again is — how much will Avatar drop off? Here’s what the experts are saying:
No sooner had Avatar done the unthinkable — overtaking and surpassing Avatar as the #1 Box Office Hit of all time in terms of global box office gross — than the goal posts started getting moved, with most of the articles now starting to footnote the accomplishment with calculations of number of admissions rather than total box office gross as the new way of measuring the all time champ.
the Monday figures are in and Avatar’s $3.2m domestic and $16.9m foreign gross put it over the top versus Titanic in terms of combined US and Foreign Gross, with a current total of $1.859B compared to Titanic’s $1.843B.
The Avatar juggernaut continued to roll during the 21-23 January weekend, and now with the actuals out it is confirmed that James Cameron’s sci-fi epic logged a U.S. gross of $34.9m (we had predicted $34m), off only 18 percent from the previous week — a pace that is in line with Titanic’s trend at the same point in its release and the lowest dropoff by far of any wide releases currently in theaters.
The highly partisan 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court last week giving corporations the right to unlimited political spending is one of the most alarming decisions to come out of the court in decades. It threatens the integrity of the entire political system.
When Avatar picked up Best Picture and Best Director at the Golden Globes, it seemed likely that the march to coronate Avatar as Best Picture was one — but last night the Producers Guild gave its top honor to Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” and this, plus the Screen Actor’s Guild also ignoring Avatar (not a surprise) leaves the Oscar race for Best Picture in a state of confusion.
Avatar has re-energized my affection and appreciation for the great adventure novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars and according to James Cameron a principal source of inspiration for Avatar. One thing that Burroughs and Cameron have in common, I think, is a unique and perhaps intuitive ability to grasp the mythic structures that cause their stories to resonate astonishingly across disparate cultures.
It’s official: With $36M for the Jan 21-23 weekend in the US and another big foreign weekend, Avatar has moved into the number one all time spot in terms of foreign gross, and will overtake Titanic for overall global gross (US + Foreign) in a matter of days.
Don’t know if any of you caught it, but the NFL channel had Super Bowl III on yesterday — the Broadway Joe Namath New York Jets dismantling of the heavily favored Baltimore Colts, 16-7. It was a terrific trip down memory lane–who could forget the Namath “guarantee” of a victory at a time when the AFL was thought to be light years behind the NFL — a guarantee that only served to drive up the betting line from 13 to as much as 20 points.
UPDATE 12:00PM PST: Fox has just announced that Titanic, with it’s Saturday overseas take, has passed Titanic as the all-time #1 in terms of overseas gross. The James Cameron mega-budget blockbuster rolled up an overseas cume through Sunday of $1.288 billion, exceeding by $46 million “Titanic’s” 13-year international boxoffice record of $1.242 billion.” END UPDATE
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Yesterday being the first Saturday since August with no football games to watch, and the new crop of films being relatively uninspiring, my wife and I decided to take in an Avatar matinee at the nearest IMAX. We arrived an hour early and were the first in line — didn’t expect that — […]
Every once in awhile there’s a pop culture moment that just won’t quit, and one of those happened lately when “General” Larry Platt appeared at the Atlanta Auditions for American Idol. They saved him for last, and because he’s over the age limit of 28 (he’s 62) he’s not continuing as a contestant but that’s hardly the point. His audition went viral, he found himself on The View, school-teachers started playing it and having their kids sing it, and the truth is it might even mark the beginning of the decline of popularity of the famous “sag” pants style that has been the norm for the last 10 years or so in certain age groups.
Earlier this week I wrote about comparisons between Avatar and the great planetary adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs, particularly the John Carter of Mars series which is currently in production with Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Toy Story) directing. As a teen I truly fell in love with Burroughs’ stories, which in those days were being reissued on paperback by ACE and Bantam Books. I was living Germany, an Army brat, and I ordered the books in the mail and would be sent into near ecstacy when a US Mail Jiffy Bag with 4 or 5 books in it would arrive.
Manny Pacquiao’s weight change over time is compared to other boxing greats including Floyd Mayweather, Tommy Hearns, Henry Armstrong, and others.
So, as of today, Avatar has unadjusted gross of $512,852,205 in 34 days in release. Titanic had $242,748,914 after 34 days in release. If we apply the inflation adjuster we multiply Titanic’s total of $242,748,914 by 156% (derived by dividing $4.69 into $7.45) and Titanic’s adjusted total becomes$380,427,403 after 34 days in release.
A new study shows that the U.S. birth rates of babies brought to term by “healthy, white mothers” in the US are on average 3 ounces lighter than they were 20 years ago.
Detailed article on the creative connection between Edgar Rice Burroughs and James Cameron.
Analysis of Avatar’s prospects going into its sixth weekend against three newcomers: Legion, Tooth Fairy, and Extraordinary measures.
Following is the day-by-day Avatar vs Titanic box office performance chart updated through Wednesday, January 20. As of today Avatar’s total stands at $512M Domestic Gross and Total Worldwide Gross of$1.68M
Click to enlarge:
Year of the Spy Book Trailer
Above is the Year of the Spy Book Trailer — for my upcoming non-fiction book about espionage upheavals on the streets of Moscow in 1985.
Below is a “trailer” showcasing the writing and video services I provide to clients.
Michael Sellers — Writing and Video Services
My eBook — Just released Dec 5, 2012
EBook You don't need a Kindle or iPad -- Download Adobe Digital Editions for Free, then read the .mobi (Kindle Format) or .epub (Nook, iPad Format) digital book on your computer. Or order the PDF which is formatted exactly like the print book.Recent Posts
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