Film: Avatar Makes Fastest Ever $1 Billion at Box Office

By Entertainment Desk; published on January 4, 2010 at 11:01 am

Avatar, the highly promoted and largely computer generated movie distributed by 20th Century Fox last month has become the fastest ever film to gross $1 Billion at the box office in ticket sales.

While some commentators have been quick to point out that this rapid revenue is due, in part, to the premium price attracted by 3D movies, the swift sales for Avatar mean that, just weeks after its premier, Avatar is already the fourth highest grossing film at box office in history, the top four currently consists of:

Titanic – $1.8bn
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – $1.12bn
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest – $1.07bn
Avatar – $1bn

With the film not even out in Italy – where it is scheduled for a 15th January release – it is highly likely that, following a January with few big movies coming to screens, Avatar will overtake all those above it in the current list to become the biggest selling movie in history.

What is astounding is that Avatar passed the billion dollar mark in just 17 days, making $350m in the US alone and over $670m in the rest of the world.

With many fans deciding to watch the movie multiple times and many non movie-goers deciding that the 3D experience and huge budget spent by director James Cameron on this movie is sufficient draw to pull them into theatres, Avatar is proving to provide real return on investment. Bert Livingston, a distribution expert for 20th Century Fox explained:

“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’”

Posted by Entertainment Desk on January 4, 2010. Filed under Entertainment,Film. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

News Tags: Avatar, James Cameron, Movies.

About Entertainment Desk

Editors and staff from the Entertainment Desk at The Global Herald.

Website: http://theglobalherald.com/section/entertainment/