Avatar continued it’s crushing sweep at the box office over the New Year’s weekend, picking up another $68 million domestically and reaching over $1 billion worldwide – only the fifth movie ever to hit that mark, according to the Associated Press.
Here is the top five at the box office this weekend:
1. Avatar (Fox) – $68.3 mil; 3,461 theaters; $19,734 PT; $352.1 mil cume
2. Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros.) – $38.3 mil; 3,626 theaters; $10,586 PT; $140.6 mil cume
3. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (Fox) – $36.6 mil; 3,747 theaters; $9,768 PT; $157.3 mil cume
4. It’s Complicated (Universal) – $18.7 mil; 2,897 theaters; $6,455 PT; $59.1 mil cume
5. The Blind Side (Warner Bros.) – $12.6 mil; 2,926 theaters; $4,323 PT; $209 mil cume
Apparently, I was wrong about my guesstimate that Alvin and the Chipmunks would shoot ahead over the weekend. I should never underestimate the power of a visually groundbreaking James Cameron film, I suppose. “It’s like a runaway freight train. It just keeps doing business,” Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston told AP. “Here’s what’s happening: I think everybody has to see Avatar once. Even people who don’t normally go to the movies, they’ve heard about it and are saying, ‘I have to see it.’ Then there’s those people seeing it multiple times.” The same thing happened with Cameron’s Titanic; the guy simply knows how to craft a film you have to see on the big screen AND, for many, have to see again and again.
As for this coming weekend, Avatar just may win again, since there isn’t anything earth-shattering to knock it off its throne – which is actually pretty typical for the first week of the new year. Still, you gotta open something, so what we have is Youth in Revolt, another Michael Cera-starrer where he comes of age. There’s the romantic comedy Leap Year with Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. And finally, what I think looks kinda creepy and cool, is the horror flick Daybreakers, about a future plague that turns everyone into vampires — and then the blood starts to run out. Neato. Check out the trailer: