Farm -
A GWTW-type movie would be lucky to hit $1 billion, worldwide.
The problem is that if you look at the market when GWTW came out, you understand that the movie was so huge, there weren't any movies that could really play against it for not weeks, or months, but YEARS.
So any event movie today is going to get smashed by another movie in a much shorter time frame.
Avatar does have an incredibly unique advantage here, which has made it #2 in history (for revenue) and will make it #1:
3D.
Just like Montana has stated (anecdotal), 3D theaters are still being packed for Avatar. Not only are they a rare commodity, the fact is there aren't many movies that could steal away screens from Avatar. From my understanding, the next movie to use 3D is Alice in Wonderland - a movie coming out in MARCH. That gives Avatar 4 months of exclusivity for most 3D/IMAX theaters.
Any movie that gets that kind of run in today's market is going to do well. Throw in the 3D surcharge ($4 where I live), and Avatar was supposed to get this kind of run.
Heck, look at ANY 3D movie made last year - Final Destination, Ice Age - both did phenomenally well (IA3 was a huge BO shocker, and FD3D sold insanely well for being a trashy horror movie).
But, 2 years from now, 3D will be everywhere, and the surcharge won't apply. Then it'll be a few more years if not a decade before a movie breaks Avatar's BO record (which I put at $2 billion now).
..
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Oh man, I just checked the weekend estimates. Avatar made almost $200 million worldwide THIS WEEKEND. It INCREASED from last weekend. It was supposed to drop 20-30% overall.
Yeah. Titanic is done. If you hate Avatar, you'll have to deal with it being the #1-grossing movie for a very long time.
Total Worldwide Box Office stands at $1,331 million USD.
Back from the dead, I'm afraid.
