Valentine’s Day weekend showed no love to Avatar as the film dropped from second to fourth in its ninth week of release. The sci-fi flick, while still amassing $22 million, was trumped by the bloated and over-populated Valentine’s Day ($52 million), the kid fantasy flick Percy Jackson ($31 million), and The Wolfman ($30.6 million). Dear John dropped from first to fifth place with an estimated $15.3 million.
See this weekends grosses by clicking here.
Not that it really matters for Avatar. Even if you add up the top 50 movie grosses for the week, and possibly the month of February, the total amount still would pale in comparison to Avatar’s massive $2.3 billion.
What surprises me is the quick drop Dear John had over the course of one week. Perhaps audiences wanted something lighter for their Valentine’s Day weekend than the tear-inducing Nicholas Spark’s drama.
Percy Jackson came out of nowhere and did better than The Wolfman. The kid-friendly fantasy flick is already faring better than the Dwayne Johnson kiddie comedy, The Tooth Fairy. Since its release four weeks ago, Tooth Fairy has made $41 million and has quickly slipped downward at the box office. Meanwhile, The Wolfman pulled in a decent opening, especially when you consider that the whole Vampire/Werewolf trend is on its way out.
With new movies taking the reigns and doing better now than Avatar, is it time for Avatar to go away? Has it made enough money? Does it really need to make more? Titanic was in theaters about 6 months, and Avatar has only been out 9 weeks. So, could Avatar hit $3 billion if it remains in theaters until May or even June 2010?
What do you think? Other than its record-breaking, does anyone care about Avatar anymore? Are you ready for it to disappear? Leave a comment and let us know.
I think Avatar is going to stop showing in theaters sometime around the middle of march, grossing somewhere upwards of 2.5 billion when the dust settles.
No matter what happens, Avatar is still the best movie I’ve seen in a long time; James Cameron never ceases to impress.