Avatar: the all-time greatest...

Avatar has succeeded where generations of heavy weight boxers have failed: it holds all the major titles.

Cameron’s Smurf movie beat Titanic’s US box office record on Tuesday 2 February; it stood at $606m at close of play Thursday. There is some irony that it will likely come second at this weekend’s box office – after seven weeks at number 1 – to a teenage girl-skewing romantic weepie (which would be an apt description of Titanic) as most males will be watching the Super Bowl.

Avatar adds the US title to its international and worldwide records: just shy of $1.5bn and $2.1bn respectively.

Internationally, Avatar’s top 10 markets are (with Titanic’s hauls in brackets):
• China $127m ($43.9m)
• UK $103.5m ($114m)
• Germany $102m ($129.9m)
• France $101m ($129m)
• Russia $98.8m ($5m)
• Japan $91.1m ($201.3m)
• South Korea $86m ($17m)
• Australia $81.9m ($38.9m)
• Spain $79.5m ($44m)
• Italy $53m [after only three weeks] ($69.9m)

It will beat Titanic’s all-time UK record this weekend or by the middle of next week (at least in dollar terms). Last weekend (29-31 January, its seventh week of release) Avatar brought in $7.7m, a fall of just 6% from the previous weekend. Its previous three weekend-to-weekend comparisons were -7%, +16%, and -20%. Its displayed similarly astonishing legs in every major market.

With nine Oscar noms and the potential for two key wins, Avatar will continue to raise the box office bar still further.