CBS) <!-- sphereit start--> Updated at 7:00 p.m. EST
"Avatar" has surpassed "Titanic" at the box office, topping $1.8 billion worldwide.
"Avatar" Is Biggest Box Office Draw Ever
Cameron Film Sinks His "Titanic" as Highest-Grossing Movie, but "Gone with the Wind" Way Ahead When Inflation Factored In
"Avatar," observes CBS News Correspondent Ben Tracy, has made director James Cameron king of the world again. He out-did his "Titanic" success by creating an entirely new world for moviegoers, combining state-of-the art 3D visual effects with old-fashioned romance.
Cameron sent his actors to the University of Southern California to have their faces scanned. The data from those images helped create the digital characters - the shape of their faces and eyes right down to every pore and wrinkle.
"You can give that sense of they're really there, in that world and I think that was one of the strengths of the movie," said Cryus Wilson with the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC.
Avatar star Sigourney Weaver says Cameron "has so much respect for the audience and the individual theater-goer, he wanted to give them the story he dreamed of seeing when he was 14."
Still, Cameron was criticized early-on for the film's budget, said to be nearly half-a-billion dollars.
But Cameron was having none of it, saying, "You learn to tune all that out and just say, 'Wait until people see the film. Then we'll know if we're in trouble or if we're in good shape."
That, understates Tracy, is no longer in question, with "Avatar" attracting a worldwide audience of both men and women, young and old. "And it ain't over yet," Dergarabedian points out. "This film could do $2 billion worldwide, something unthinkable" before.
Cameron is giving a huge boost to 3D film making - 3D showings of "Avatar," with their higher ticket prices make up 65 percent of the film's overseas box office and nearly 80 percent of its U.S. draw. That helped "Avatar" sink "Titanic's" 13-year-old box office record in just 40 days.
"Now it paves the way for other movies to be made with this technology," said Dergarabedian. "I think that will pay dividends in the future for Hollywood and for individual filmmakers."
Yet, says Tracy, "Avatar" will need some very special effects to beat the inflation-adjusted box office champ.
In 1939, 'Gone with the Wind" took in $400 million worldwide. That's the equivalent of some $6 billion in today's dollars.
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"Avatar" has surpassed "Titanic" at the box office, topping $1.8 billion worldwide.
"Avatar" Is Biggest Box Office Draw Ever
Cameron Film Sinks His "Titanic" as Highest-Grossing Movie, but "Gone with the Wind" Way Ahead When Inflation Factored In
"Avatar," observes CBS News Correspondent Ben Tracy, has made director James Cameron king of the world again. He out-did his "Titanic" success by creating an entirely new world for moviegoers, combining state-of-the art 3D visual effects with old-fashioned romance.
Cameron sent his actors to the University of Southern California to have their faces scanned. The data from those images helped create the digital characters - the shape of their faces and eyes right down to every pore and wrinkle.
"You can give that sense of they're really there, in that world and I think that was one of the strengths of the movie," said Cryus Wilson with the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC.
Avatar star Sigourney Weaver says Cameron "has so much respect for the audience and the individual theater-goer, he wanted to give them the story he dreamed of seeing when he was 14."
Still, Cameron was criticized early-on for the film's budget, said to be nearly half-a-billion dollars.
But Cameron was having none of it, saying, "You learn to tune all that out and just say, 'Wait until people see the film. Then we'll know if we're in trouble or if we're in good shape."
That, understates Tracy, is no longer in question, with "Avatar" attracting a worldwide audience of both men and women, young and old. "And it ain't over yet," Dergarabedian points out. "This film could do $2 billion worldwide, something unthinkable" before.
Cameron is giving a huge boost to 3D film making - 3D showings of "Avatar," with their higher ticket prices make up 65 percent of the film's overseas box office and nearly 80 percent of its U.S. draw. That helped "Avatar" sink "Titanic's" 13-year-old box office record in just 40 days.
"Now it paves the way for other movies to be made with this technology," said Dergarabedian. "I think that will pay dividends in the future for Hollywood and for individual filmmakers."
Yet, says Tracy, "Avatar" will need some very special effects to beat the inflation-adjusted box office champ.
In 1939, 'Gone with the Wind" took in $400 million worldwide. That's the equivalent of some $6 billion in today's dollars.
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--> <!-- close #branding --><!-- entry --> [B][URL="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/01/should-avatar-get-an-asterisk-in-the-boxoffice-record-books.html"]Should 'Avatar' get an asterisk in the box-office record books?[/URL][/B]
January 28, 2010 | 12:57 pm
<!-- sphereit start --> Everyone in the world in the past couple of days has been writing about how "Avatar" has now surpassed "Titanic" to become the highest-grossing film of all time. But most of the stories have left out the tricky part: You can only make the claim for "Avatar" being the all-time box office champ if you leave out a few prickly little particulars, like the ones my colleague Claudia Eller mentioned in a recent post: namely ticket price inflation, foreign currency fluctuations and surcharges on 3-D movie screens.
So when is a box-office record really a record? And should "Avatar," like so many modern-day movies that have benefited from the steep rise in ticket prices, especially in the new 3-D era, carry an asterisk next to their name? After all, if we were writing about the all-time box-office champ in terms of actual ticket admissions, it would still be "Gone With the Wind," David O. Selznick's 1939 sweeping historical romance that has riveted moviegoers for generations. If you put together an all-time box-office chart, adjusted for inflation, "Gone With the Wind" remains the undefeated, unrivaled champion, having earned an astounding $1.45 billion in ticket sales over the years. As box-office guru, Hollywood.com's Paul Dergarabedian, told me yesterday: "You never want to say never, but that's a record that I don't think will ever be broken."
In an adjusted for inflation all-time box-office Top 10 (compiled by Dergarabedian), "Gone With the Wind" is the easy winner, with George Lucas' 1977 "Star Wars" in the No. 2 slot, with $1.26 billion in grosses, followed by 1965's "Sound of Music," 1982's "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" and 1956's "The Ten Commandments."
Jim Cameron's "Titanic" comes in at No. 6 on the chart (with $955 million) while "Avatar" doesn't even come close to making the Top 10, with a mere $558 million in grosses. To give you an idea how different the adjusted gross box-office chart is from the all-time box-office chart we normally follow, "Gone With the Wind" doesn't even make the Top 50 all-time box-office leaders chart--the one that now has "Avatar" on top.
To say that the chart we normally use is weighted toward modern-day movies would be an understatement. When Dergarabedian compiled the all-time box-office chart (the one that is not adjusted for inflation), only 5 of its top 50 films were released before 1997--Lucas' original "Star Wars" trilogy, Spielberg's "E.T." and 1990's "Home Alone." The vast majority of films on the list were released in the past half-dozen years. But when you turn things around and check out the adjusted gross Top 10 list, it has only one film--"Titanic"--that was released in the past 30 years.
It feels as if something here is out of whack. To make a comparison with our other statistic-obsessed national pastime--baseball, of course--the movie industry's box-office charts look suspiciously like baseball's steroid-plagued all-time home run list. In most career baseball records, from pitching wins to hits to RBI's and even stolen bases, there are plenty of representatives in the upper reaches of the record book from both ancient and modern times. But in the all-time home run leaders, the Top 20 list is crammed with players from the Steroid Era--i.e., players who played most of their career in the 1990s and first half of the 2000s.
Baseball purists are pretty unhappy about this development, so much so that when it comes to Hall of Fame consideration, many of the Steroid Era sluggers are being shunned. (Mark McGwire has 583 home runs, normally a number that would easily qualify a hitter for the Hall of Fame induction, but the St. Louis Cardinals slugger has barely earned 25% of baseball writers' votes since he became eligible for induction, not even close to enough votes for his selection.)
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "Avatar" or any of other modern-day box-office behemoths are unworthy of their money-making honors. But because of ticket price inflation, which has now quietly taken a giant leap forward, thanks to the extra dollars moviegoers are paying to see 3-D movies, the all-time box-office charts are even more heavily weighted than ever toward 21st century films. And with even more 3-D films in the pipeline, in a few years the top of the charts will be even more dominated by current films.
The solution? Why not switch over to box-office charts that are based on attendance, not grosses, which would give us a more realistic portrait of how many people actually saw a film, not just how much moola its studio made? I don't know about you, but when I think of how much cultural heft a film has, I'm more interested in how many people enjoyed the communal delight of being in front of the big screen, not simply how much money they had to pay to see it.
Photo: "Avatar" Photo credit: 20th Century Fox
- spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen -
so I did finally see the film yesterday - was lucky, only 4 other people at the theater. The positives are the visuals, very cool - some of the simplest ones (Sully's video logs) added so much to the film. Also, I usually get bored watching movies (side affect of working at a video store for 5 years perhaps) but 'Avatar' kept moving well, good tempo and such. The negatives for me outweigh the positives though. James Cameron can't write, plain and simple. The characters lack detail and development making it hard to care about them, and they're motivations are so obvious and unchanging it takes away from any real intrigue they may have (very similiar to the characters in Titanic). The dialogue is awful. Many of the visuals seemed like rip-offs, which I know is hard to avoid in the world of scifi, but his floating mountains are right out of an animated film called "Castle in the Sky."
Also, as an aside, was it me or were those helicopter-type-things flying under the tree-line with far too much ease? I mean, I know it's nitpicking to the max... but that was just odd.
They also need a better way for people to see 3D. I really didn't enjoy wearing the glasses, made my sinuses hurt a bit after the 3hrs.
A serious question for others: do people who wear glasses regularly just wear the 3D glasses on top of their prescriptions or...?
so I did finally see the film yesterday - was lucky, only 4 other people at the theater. The positives are the visuals, very cool - some of the simplest ones (Sully's video logs) added so much to the film. Also, I usually get bored watching movies (side affect of working at a video store for 5 years perhaps) but 'Avatar' kept moving well, good tempo and such. The negatives for me outweigh the positives though. James Cameron can't write, plain and simple. The characters lack detail and development making it hard to care about them, and they're motivations are so obvious and unchanging it takes away from any real intrigue they may have (very similiar to the characters in Titanic). The dialogue is awful. Many of the visuals seemed like rip-offs, which I know is hard to avoid in the world of scifi, but his floating mountains are right out of an animated film called "Castle in the Sky."
Also, as an aside, was it me or were those helicopter-type-things flying under the tree-line with far too much ease? I mean, I know it's nitpicking to the max... but that was just odd.
They also need a better way for people to see 3D. I really didn't enjoy wearing the glasses, made my sinuses hurt a bit after the 3hrs.
A serious question for others: do people who wear glasses regularly just wear the 3D glasses on top of their prescriptions or...?
Avatar Officially Surpasses Titanic in Domestic Box Office
Posted on 03 February 2010 by John Luchetti in News
James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar has officially surpassed Titanic’s domestic box office record with $601.2 million dollars (and counting) as of Tuesday according to The Hollywood Reporter. Avatar, much like Titanic, was pegged early on as an expensive film that would likely bomb much like Waterworld or Heaven’s Gate but has managed to prove naysayers wrong with its international & domestic box office returns. Avatar has also fared exceptionally well critically (82% fresh on RottenTomatoes) and awards wise (leading with 9 Oscar nominations along with The Hurt Locker). An astounding feat for a film once doomed by many to be a failure of epic proportions. Although increased 3D ticket prices do account for some of Avatar’s monumental performance, the film has no signs of slowing down anytime soon and could easily add another 100+ million to its already staggering total.
Despite his 12 year absence after Titanic, James Cameron has once again proven that he is “the King of the World” with both the number 1 and number 2 domestic and international box office champions. The only question now is if he can repeat his Oscar success? It is unlikely considering the overwhelming support The Hurt Locker has received from the guilds but stranger upsets have happened.
Posted on 03 February 2010 by John Luchetti in News
James Cameron’s sci-fi epic Avatar has officially surpassed Titanic’s domestic box office record with $601.2 million dollars (and counting) as of Tuesday according to The Hollywood Reporter. Avatar, much like Titanic, was pegged early on as an expensive film that would likely bomb much like Waterworld or Heaven’s Gate but has managed to prove naysayers wrong with its international & domestic box office returns. Avatar has also fared exceptionally well critically (82% fresh on RottenTomatoes) and awards wise (leading with 9 Oscar nominations along with The Hurt Locker). An astounding feat for a film once doomed by many to be a failure of epic proportions. Although increased 3D ticket prices do account for some of Avatar’s monumental performance, the film has no signs of slowing down anytime soon and could easily add another 100+ million to its already staggering total.
Despite his 12 year absence after Titanic, James Cameron has once again proven that he is “the King of the World” with both the number 1 and number 2 domestic and international box office champions. The only question now is if he can repeat his Oscar success? It is unlikely considering the overwhelming support The Hurt Locker has received from the guilds but stranger upsets have happened.
- spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen -
I agree with you regarding the helicopter things flying too easily. Also, the mechanical robots with men inside them ran a bit too fast and with too much agility. I just thought it was necessary to suspend disbelief for the sake of enjoying the rest of the movie.
I also thought the "jellyfish" things that floated through the air were too much like jellyfish which use that motion in water. That motion wouldn't work in air. The same thing with the horses. They just didn't look like something that would happen in real life with those long anteater heads.
As far as the glasses go, the theater I went to had oversized glasses that fit comfortably over my own.
---spoiler alert---
I finally saw this movie. My friends were in town from Canada so I had a chance to see it with them since I didn't want to see it alone. The theater was about half full so that was good.
I saw it in IMAX 3D and I was blown away by the visual effects. If you can see this movie in IMAX 3D do it! When they showed the lab scenes with real people it looked like I was actually there. There were also some floating creatures that looked like I could hold out my hand and let them float down on it.
I kept telling myself "I can't imagine NOT watching this in IMAX 3D". It was the 3D thing that kept my attention. My favorite 3D effect was when the guy was being chased by the animal in the beginning and jumped over the cliff into the water. I felt like I was looking over a real cliff.
The plot wasn't all that great but it wasn't bad. Again, you have to suspend some belief in what was happening and yes, it didn't mimick "Dances with Wolves" in the fact that it was a white man living with the natives and learning their ways.
I guess the visual effects really kept me interested in what was going on. Especially the mountains floating in the sky which made me think of the episode "The Cloud Minders" in Star Trek which had the city in the clouds. In addition to this episode, Star Trek also had the Cloud City on Bespin.
The part that hasn't been mentioned here is the ability of the scientists to live out their lives in another body. I saw the movie "Gamer" last weekend where people can control other people's actions using a wireless connection. Where this is all leading me is what if our consciousness is really somewhere outside our bodies? What if we really reside in another reality but are interfacing with these monkey bodies and when the monkey body that we inhabit gets injured we feel pain in our real lives?
When the monkey body we call the human body dies, our consciousness goes back to the lab/video game/virtual reality center and we pick another game (lifetime) to play.
I finally saw this movie. My friends were in town from Canada so I had a chance to see it with them since I didn't want to see it alone. The theater was about half full so that was good.
I saw it in IMAX 3D and I was blown away by the visual effects. If you can see this movie in IMAX 3D do it! When they showed the lab scenes with real people it looked like I was actually there. There were also some floating creatures that looked like I could hold out my hand and let them float down on it.
I kept telling myself "I can't imagine NOT watching this in IMAX 3D". It was the 3D thing that kept my attention. My favorite 3D effect was when the guy was being chased by the animal in the beginning and jumped over the cliff into the water. I felt like I was looking over a real cliff.
The plot wasn't all that great but it wasn't bad. Again, you have to suspend some belief in what was happening and yes, it didn't mimick "Dances with Wolves" in the fact that it was a white man living with the natives and learning their ways.
I guess the visual effects really kept me interested in what was going on. Especially the mountains floating in the sky which made me think of the episode "The Cloud Minders" in Star Trek which had the city in the clouds. In addition to this episode, Star Trek also had the Cloud City on Bespin.
The part that hasn't been mentioned here is the ability of the scientists to live out their lives in another body. I saw the movie "Gamer" last weekend where people can control other people's actions using a wireless connection. Where this is all leading me is what if our consciousness is really somewhere outside our bodies? What if we really reside in another reality but are interfacing with these monkey bodies and when the monkey body that we inhabit gets injured we feel pain in our real lives?
When the monkey body we call the human body dies, our consciousness goes back to the lab/video game/virtual reality center and we pick another game (lifetime) to play.
This is something that I find very interesting. It's pretty clear to anyone here who knows me that I am a non-believer in any religion. Despite not protesting when referred to as an atheist, I don't believe we become nothing more than fertilizer after death due to a very convincing experience that I had, that was also experienced by two other people. A lot of people take comfort in religions that provide answers for the three biggest questions that a human can ask, "where did we come from?", "why are we here?", and "what happens after we die?", me- I'm content to say "I don't know, but I think there's something."
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AVATAR Box Office: #20 All-Time Domestic Chart – Behind THE PHANTOM MENACE
[SIZE=-1]by Michelle Hutton | Feb 10, 2010
[/SIZE]
Avatar was dethroned this past weekend by the Channing Tatum-Amanda Seyfried tearjerker Dear John, but recovered the top spot at the domestic box office on Monday and remained there on Tuesday. After 54 days in release, James Cameron’s sci-fi extravaganza has grossed $633.6 million. Officially, it’s broken box-office records just about everywhere, from Manhattan and Manchester all the way to Mongolia and Mars. Of course, those are box-office figures — which often go up thanks to higher admission prices — not number of tickets sold. As I’ve mentioned before, if inflation, 3D/IMAX premium surcharges, and dollar fluctuations (for the international box-office tallies) are taken into account the overall picture changes rather dramatically.
Box Office Mojo estimates that Avatar is now #20 on the all-time domestic box-office chart adjusted for inflation, or six slots higher than it was ten days ago. It’s just ahead of Disney’s Fantasia (1940), which has had numerous rereleases, and about $12 million behind George Lucas‘ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999).
If things continue as they’ve been — a decrease in revenues of around 15% each weekend — Avatar will gross another $4 million by Thursday night and about $19 million over the three-day weekend for a total of $23 million. By Monday, Avatar should be either #17 or #18 on the inflation-adjusted all-time box-office chart, having passed both Star Wars and Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate, while (figuratively speaking) running neck and neck against Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993).
Still some ways ahead of Avatar will be Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), starring Harrison Ford (above); George Roy Hill’s Best Picture Oscar winner The Sting (1973), with Paul Newman and Robert Redford; Richard Marquand’s Return of the Jedi (1983), also with Harrison Ford; William Wyler’s multiple Oscar winner Ben-Hur (1959), with Charlton Heston; and another Harrison Ford movie, Irvin Kershner’s The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
Once again, bear in mind that those are approximations based on "average" ticket prices provided by the National Association of Theater Owners. (Box Office Mojo came up with its own estimated average — $7.61* — for 2010.) An accurate calculation of a film’s popularity at the box office — as in, the number of tickets sold (and its ratio to the population size at the time of the film’s release) — would be based on where a movie made most of its money, e.g., a top-dollar New York house, in thousands of cheap small-town theaters, or at 3D/IMAX theaters that charge a premium (Avatar ticket prices range from $9 to $16.50 or whereabouts, or between 28.5% and 40% more than ticket prices for 2D movies.)
It’s also worth remembering that population increases, changes in movie-going demographics, and the growth of entertainment alternatives (home video, cable television, pay-per-view options) should all be taken into consideration when comparing the box-office success of movies from different eras. And that many of the movies found on Box Office Mojo’s inflation-adjusted chart had one or more rereleases throughout the decades.
The effect of piracy on a movie’s box-office performance remains highly debatable. It all depends on the type of movie (would you rather watch Avatar on your computer screen or at a 3D movie house?), the quality of the pirated material (high-def. copies vs. crummy reproductions), and where the copying is taking place (Beverly Hills or, say, Lagos or Kinshasa, where most people who’d buy 50-cent copies of Hollywood flicks wouldn’t be able to afford going to the movies, anyhow).
* Instead of the previously reported $7.35
Photo: Avatar (WETA / 20th Century Fox); Raiders of the Lost Ark (Paramount)
[SIZE=-1]by Michelle Hutton | Feb 10, 2010
[/SIZE]
Avatar was dethroned this past weekend by the Channing Tatum-Amanda Seyfried tearjerker Dear John, but recovered the top spot at the domestic box office on Monday and remained there on Tuesday. After 54 days in release, James Cameron’s sci-fi extravaganza has grossed $633.6 million. Officially, it’s broken box-office records just about everywhere, from Manhattan and Manchester all the way to Mongolia and Mars. Of course, those are box-office figures — which often go up thanks to higher admission prices — not number of tickets sold. As I’ve mentioned before, if inflation, 3D/IMAX premium surcharges, and dollar fluctuations (for the international box-office tallies) are taken into account the overall picture changes rather dramatically.
Box Office Mojo estimates that Avatar is now #20 on the all-time domestic box-office chart adjusted for inflation, or six slots higher than it was ten days ago. It’s just ahead of Disney’s Fantasia (1940), which has had numerous rereleases, and about $12 million behind George Lucas‘ Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999).
If things continue as they’ve been — a decrease in revenues of around 15% each weekend — Avatar will gross another $4 million by Thursday night and about $19 million over the three-day weekend for a total of $23 million. By Monday, Avatar should be either #17 or #18 on the inflation-adjusted all-time box-office chart, having passed both Star Wars and Mike Nichols‘ The Graduate, while (figuratively speaking) running neck and neck against Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993).
Once again, bear in mind that those are approximations based on "average" ticket prices provided by the National Association of Theater Owners. (Box Office Mojo came up with its own estimated average — $7.61* — for 2010.) An accurate calculation of a film’s popularity at the box office — as in, the number of tickets sold (and its ratio to the population size at the time of the film’s release) — would be based on where a movie made most of its money, e.g., a top-dollar New York house, in thousands of cheap small-town theaters, or at 3D/IMAX theaters that charge a premium (Avatar ticket prices range from $9 to $16.50 or whereabouts, or between 28.5% and 40% more than ticket prices for 2D movies.)
It’s also worth remembering that population increases, changes in movie-going demographics, and the growth of entertainment alternatives (home video, cable television, pay-per-view options) should all be taken into consideration when comparing the box-office success of movies from different eras. And that many of the movies found on Box Office Mojo’s inflation-adjusted chart had one or more rereleases throughout the decades.
The effect of piracy on a movie’s box-office performance remains highly debatable. It all depends on the type of movie (would you rather watch Avatar on your computer screen or at a 3D movie house?), the quality of the pirated material (high-def. copies vs. crummy reproductions), and where the copying is taking place (Beverly Hills or, say, Lagos or Kinshasa, where most people who’d buy 50-cent copies of Hollywood flicks wouldn’t be able to afford going to the movies, anyhow).
* Instead of the previously reported $7.35
Photo: Avatar (WETA / 20th Century Fox); Raiders of the Lost Ark (Paramount)
