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If you haven’t already seen “Avatar” then it’s about time. This 3-D movie has now surpassed $1 billion at the global box office.  James Cameron’s sci-fi film grossed $68.3 million over New Year’s weekend which was only about a 10 percent drop from Christmas weekend which raked in $352.1 million in the U.S. alone. This movie had the third biggest weekend in the U.S. ever.

Although it’s only been out 18 days “Avatar” is now over the $1 billion mark. In comparison the Dark Knight earned almost that much the entire time it was in theatres and “Spider-Man” earned $45 million on it’s third biggest week. This movie has smashed records right and left. Another major factor is that $66.4 million of the worldwide total came from IMAX theatres, which typically comes with an inflated ticket price but a bigger screen. With this film IMAX also hit a worldwide record total.

This is one of the most expensive if not the most expensive movie ever made. The original budget was $230 million but when you add up the marketing campaign and contributions Cameron made himself the New York Times believes that the movie actually cost around $500 million to make.  So essentially, Cameron is lucky this was a big hit. These numbers are huge when you think about how many people have gone to see this movie.

Tons of box office records have been broken but the fact is the profit on this movie wasn’t that high. When you compare the fact that it made over $1 billion but it cost half of that to make; the numbers are still huge but it’s a little bit less impressive.  I’m not trying to burst anyone’s bubble or optimism or even love of the movie but considering how much they spent they’re lucky that the public has been so receptive. And it seems that it will continue to grow in the box office. So who knows how much it will rake in before it leaves the box office.

Avatar has been hailed by some as the “best movie ever” while some say “it’s okay” and others remark that “the graphics were pretty cool but it was nothing great.” So it seems that there are pretty diverse opinions about the movie. Basically, it boils down to the fact that you can’t rely on others opinions about this movie. You will have to see it for yourself in order to determine if it’s really good or not.

Tags: avatar, avatar movie, box office records, james camerons' avatar, sci-fi films

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.