Avatar still rules box
2010-01-31 23:28
Los Angeles - Avatar edged closer to the record North American haul of Titanic after earning $30m during its seventh chart-topping weekend, distributor 20th Century Fox said on Sunday
James Cameron's 3-D sci-fi spectacular has grossed $594.5m to date and should surpass the $601m tally of the filmmaker's 1997 melodrama Titanic by Wednesday, the News Corp owned studio said.
The film last Monday broke the $1.843bn record worldwide total of Titanic. International data for the weekend were not immediately available.
The one caveat to the Avatar records is that sales are not adjusted for inflation, or for the fact that ticket prices were considerably higher for 3-D screenings.
Mel Gibson's first on-screen performance since 2002, the kidnap thriller Edge of Darkness, opened at No 2 with $17.1m in sales. Still, it marked his worst opening since Braveheart launched with $9.9 million in 1995. He was last in theatres with Signs, which opened to $60 million in 2002.
Gibson, who has directed two big movies since starring in Signs, has kept a fairly low profile since his 2006 arrest for drunk-driving in Malibu when he made anti-Semitic comments.
Also new was the widely lambasted Walt Disney Co romantic comedy When in Rome, starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel. It opened at No 3 with $12.1m in sales.
Fox's The Tooth Fairy, which was steady at No 4 with $10m in its second weekend; the total for the Dwayne Johnson comedy rose to $26m at the box office. The Book of Eli fell two spots to No 5 with $8.8m; after three weeks, the Denzel Washington drama has earned $74m.
Edge of Darkness and The Book of Eli were released by Warner Bros, a unit of Time Warner Inc.