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'Avatar' Officially Reigns as All-Time Box Office King

by Amar Toor on January 27, 2010 at 09:20 AM

'Avatar' Officially All-Time Box Office KingMaybe spending nearly half a billion dollars on a movie isn't such a bad idea, after all. As CBS News reports, James Cameron's latest blockbuster 'Avatar' has officially become the all-time biggest box office success, dethroning, of course, the director's own 'Titanic,' which kept the throne warm for more than a decade. The film has grossed a staggering $1.8 billion worldwide, and many expect it to eventually break through the once-unimaginable $2 billion ceiling.

Cameron had initially taken a lot of criticism for the seemingly absurd sums of money he was spending on his high-tech epic. As the notoriously self-assured mastermind behind 'Aliens' and the 'Terminator' franchise explained to CBS News, though, "You learn to tune all that out and just say, 'Wait until people see the film. Then we'll know if we're in trouble or if we're in good shape.'"

Not only does Cameron's latest box office windfall completely recalibrate the financial metric for filmmakers, it will also likely have stylistic ripple effects, as well. About 65-percent of its international revenue (and a full 80-percent of its U.S. earnings) reportedly came from the 3-D version of the film -- a sign, many say, of the financial viability of 3-D movies, and a harbinger of more to come. Hollywood.com's Paul Dergarabedian tells CBS that the film's success "paves the way for other movies to be made with this technology," an approach that he thinks "will pay dividends in the future for Hollywood and for individual filmmakers."

We're still not sure that there are a whole lot of studios out there willing to shell out 'Avatar' type money for sci-fi films. But we definitely think that the film -- and its success -- will likely result in a new wave of similarly oriented films. And if any of them can even approach 'Avatar' in the mind-blowing department [Ed. Note: Debatable], we'll be satisfied. [From: CBS News]

Tags: avatar, box office, BoxOffice, films, james cameron, JamesCameron, movies, top

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