2009 at the Box Office (1 Viewer)

[Tino]

The real boxoffice test will be next week when most people go back to work. It will be interesting to see.

 

[LynxFX]

$18.4 million on Wed for Avatar.

This thing is a beast! By the end of the weekend it will probably be 20th Century Fox's highest grossing movie ever. (non-adjusted) And in just 3 weeks.

 

[Jose Martinez]

I believe Star Wars is Fox's highest grossing domestic movie. Avatar will need another $150M to reach that I believe.

Worldwide, dunno.

Speaking of worldwide, Avatar should cross $800M by today!

 

[Malcolm R]

There really needs to be a more equitable way of judging movie success. Not only do today's films have the advantage of regular inflation, but now many event films are being released in higher-priced IMAX and 3D formats, too.

The "Highest Grossing Films of All Time" list is becoming more meaningless than ever. But the way people love talking about money, I doubt we'll ever see any changes.

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Malcolm R

There really needs to be a more equitable way of judging movie success. Not only do today's films have the advantage of regular inflation, but now many event films are being released in higher-priced IMAX and 3D formats, too.

I think with or without IMAX and 3-D prices, Avatar is a massive hit.

 

[RobertR]

Originally Posted by Malcolm R

There really needs to be a more equitable way of judging movie success. Not only do today's films have the advantage of regular inflation, but now many event films are being released in higher-priced IMAX and 3D formats, too.

The "Highest Grossing Films of All Time" list is becoming more meaningless than ever. But the way people love talking about money, I doubt we'll ever see any changes.

I believe there's at least one web site that compensates for ticket prices, and comes up with adjusted rankings. I think this would equate to actual tickets sold, which would be a more accurate measure than simply throwing out grosses.

Edit:

Found one. Avatar would have to rake in almost $1.3 billion to surpass Star Wars, using an estimated 2009 average ticket price of $7.18.

http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm

Since the average Avatar ticket price is likely higher than that, my guess is it would have to gross more like two billion dollars to surpass SW.

Note: The web site I mentioned only includes domestic grosses. That puts Avatar at a little more than 13% of Star Wars' adjusted domestic gross. Doesn't sound quite so impressive when viewed that way.

 

[TerryRL]

Since 3D theaters account for nearly 80% of all the "Avatar" showings, the movie's average ticket price is around $10 bucks compared to the national average of $7.18.

 

[Malcolm R]

Originally Posted by TravisR



I think with or without IMAX and 3-D prices, Avatar is a massive hit.

Definitely. I'm not singling out Avatar, I'm just saying the trend is for more and more event films to be released in premium-priced formats which further skews the "all time" listings.

But as Terry just pointed out, using Avatar as an example, its grosses include a nearly $3 per ticket "surcharge" on most admissions when compared to an average 2D film release. That's over a 40% "inflation" attached to about 80% of the tix sold.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Any film that can make people voluntarily hand over more money for the 3D version, I say more power to that film and its maker. It's not like people don't have a choice in paying less for the 2D version. People are wanting to see it in 3D, and aren't put off by the ticket prices. All this fixation with "well, how many tickets were sold, that's the true test of popularity." gets old. Why? Because not even the studios really care how many people saw the film, just how much money it made overall because that's the counts in terms of profit (or loss), not the number of butts in the seats for some mythic chase for the title of MOST POPULAR FILM EVER, they'd rather be involved with the MOVIE THAT MADE A CRAP-TON OF MONEY (irrespective of ticket prices because if they make a film that demands to be seen in 3D and it was made specifically for that viewing venue on the production side of the film project, then great!)!!!!

 

[Tino]

I agree Patrick. I believe AVATAR's boxoffice performance is even more impressive since people are voluntarily paying more to see it. It's an event and people want to be a part of it.

 

[Tino]

From www.boxofficeguru.com:

What a week it's been for James Cameron and the folks that do business with him. His mega-priced sci-fi smash Avatar cruised out of its second weekend with a stunning $212.7M in a mere ten days and then followed it up with a sizable $19.4M on Monday and $18.3M on Tuesday. That's more than double what the top films were grossing on the same holiday-fueled days last year.

The Fox hit shattered the $250M mark on Tuesday after only 12 days in release tying Spider-Man 2 to become the fifth fastest film to reach the quarter-billion mark. The record is still held by The Dark Knight with eight days followed by Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen with nine days, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest with ten days, and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith with eleven days. Avatar looks to break the $300M mark on Friday after just 15 days and will become the third fastest to hit that level after Dark Knight and the Transformers sequel which needed ten and fourteen days, respectively.

Moviegoers are still lining up for the 3D epic and urging friends to join the masses so another muscular gross will result this weekend. Spider-Man holds the record for the biggest third weekend gross with $45M, but Avatar should have no problem crushing that. Ticket sales may fall from the Christmas numbers by about 25% leading to a Friday-to-Sunday tally of around $56M. That would propel the 17-day cume to a staggering $341M.

 

[Tino]

I say $60 million for AVATAR this weekend.

 

[Patrick Sun]

What's even more impressive is that it'll bank around $70 million for its second set of weekdays (Monday-Thursday).

 

[TheBat]

with avatar having a very impressive run at the box office.. the slow months of movies in the next few months.. any idea on what movie could stop it? doesn't seem like a real challege until alice in wonderland and clash of the titans.

Jacob

 

[RobertR]

I don't think anyone's questioning that the film is successful, just that it's very premature to rank it with all-time films in terms of the number of people seeing it.

 

[dpippel]

The profitability of a film is determined by box office revenues, not by the number of tickets sold.

 

[RobertR]

Again, no one's disputing profitability (although here again, Avatar cost almost $300 million more to make than the original Star Wars, so that's a much bigger cost to overcome). I don't remember people talking about profitability back then, only how popular it was.

 

[dpippel]

And that's what I see a lot of people talking about now regarding Avatar - popularity. The box office numbers are of course news as well, but that's just a reflection of how popular it is.

 

[Chuck Mayer]

And we frankly shouldn't rank films across movie marketplaces. The options in 1977 aren't what they are in 2009. Home video, digital distribution, DVD, Blu-Ray, thousands of screens. Let's compare Avatar to it's peers. And it seems to be, yet again for Cameron, establishing new benchmarks for "legs".

By a modern metric of popularity, Avatar is as "popular" as any film this decade. Yes, it costs more, but people seem willing to pay it.

 

[TerryRL]

http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/new-years-day-another-big-avatar-payday-the-blind-side-crosses-200m-domestic/

"Avatar" will become the first film in history to earn at least $50 million in three consecutive weekends of business. Based on these numbers the movie could actually be looking at another weekend of earning north of the $60 million mark. This thing looks headed for a final haul in the neighborhood of $450-$500 million. The movie has already earned more than $800 million globally, and a final worldwide mark of over $1 billion is now a lock.