Corona | Coming Attractions

Let's forget about this weekend's box office for a moment and look at the bigger story: Avatar is now $109 million dollars away from becoming the highest-grossing movie of all-time, domestically. Worldwide, the gulf that separates Avatar from becoming #1 and besting Titanic is $240 million dollars.

I'm going to predict it right here and now: Avatar will beat Titanic. The momentum it has is exactly like the one Titanic had 12 years ago (and back when ticket costs were lower.) This weekend's box office for Avatar was $41.3 million. That's just a 17% dip from last weekend's box office. The word of mouth effect that Avatar is enjoying is stellar, and that's not even counting what will happen when the water cooler talk really starts when the film is within distance of Titanic's $600 million record. That talk should start in the mainstream come next weekend.

But Avatar isn't chewing up all of the ticket sales. In fact, Avatar might be helping pick up what is generally a slower season for theaters. Consider this week's second-highest performer, Warner Bros.' The Book of Eli, which had a $31.6m opening weekend. Any way that you crunch the numbers, that's a great figure for a moderately budgeted movie opening in the January doldrums. The Lovely Bones, which expanded wide and came in third place with $17m, even on luke warm to negative reviews, had an opening box office more typical to a major release in January.

Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 added another $11.5m to its gross and is now $8 million short of crossing $200 million dollars domestic; it's also proof that the universe is a cold and forboding place. Sherlock Holmes now stands at $180m domestic (with its new take of $9.8 this weekend.) Lionsgate has The Spy Next Door, a family friendly actioner starring Jackie Chan, in sixth spot with a $9.7m opening weekend; not bad at all. It's Complicated is now a moderate hit for Universal ($7.6m new, $88.2m total.) Leap Year is also doing alright for Uni ($5.8m new, $17.5m total) and only tumbled a respectable 36% in its second week out. The Blind Side is the third Warner Bros. movie in the top ten ($5.5m new, $226.7 total) and is not only the biggest hit in Sandra Bullock's career, it's the only one to cross $200m in ticket sales. And in tenth place is Up in the Air which added another $5.4m to its $62m domestic gross.

Slipping out of the top ten: The Princess and the Frog. At #12 its domestic total now stands at $96 million. Daybreakers is a position above the Frog and has acculumated $24 million in its two weeks of release, earning back its production budget. However, the same cannot be said of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus; with another million dollars added to its $4.8m gross, it looks like the final film of Heath Ledger's career will be more of a trivia question and not a financial tour de force like The Dark Knight was.