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James Cameron’s $450 million game-changing pro-green sci-fi extravaganza Avatar has completed 3 weekends at the international box-office. And the numbers that this film has managed to throw up are just as awe-inspiring, if not more, than the film itself. In just 17 days of its release, Avatar has done a worldwide gross of $1,025,378,961…a little over a billion dollars! Almost 66% of that is from its business in the non-American markets.

In the US, Avatar has made $352,114,898, of which its opening weekend accounted for $77,025,481. That is roughly 22% of its overall domestic total. This proves that Avatar, unlike many spectacular action films, actually has legs. This year’s The Twilight Saga: New Moon did double the business of Avatar on its opening weekend, but its overall gross by the end of its run was less by almost a $100 million than Avatar’s 17 day total. This means that New Moon’s opening accounted for nearly 50% of its overall gross.

Avatar, by comparison, did not have a terrific opening. It ranks 28^th in the all-time opening weekends list. But it ranks 1st in both the second and third weekends list. Avatar made $75,617,183 in its second weekend, that’s a drop less than 2% from its first weekend number. In its third weekend now, Avatar has grossed $68,490,688…again a drop less than 10% from its previous weekend. These are phenomenal percentages, indicating that Avatar is able to cumulate almost the same amount from its second and third weekends as much as it did in its first. In other words, this film is hardly witnessing any drop in its audience.

This is further attested by the fact that Avatar also holds the records now for the 2^nd highest Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday grosses. On weekdays even, this film is finding blockbuster audience patronage. In its second week for instance, Avatar did 20% more on its weekdays than it did in its first week weekdays. Moreover, Avatar did 7.5% more in its second week overall than it did in its first; its second Saturday being bigger than its first Saturday and also its single biggest grossing day yet with $28,274,406.

Avatar has been the number one film at the US box-office for 3 weeks now, and also the top film for 15 out of its 17 days at the marquee. The only two times it slipped was to the release days of Alvin And The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel and Sherlock Holmes, but it immediately claimed its place back.

The more intimidating aspect of the Avatar box-office story though is its snowball effect. This is a film that started out relatively slow, but has been building up mass substantially and consistently since. It was the 24^th fastest film to reach $100 million, the 18^th fastest to reach $150 million and the 10^th fastest to reach $200 million. Over the last week however, Avatar became the 6^th fastest film to reach $250 million, the 3^rd fastest to reach $300 million and an astonishing 2^nd fastest to reach $350 million! Films generally operate in the reverse trend; Avatar is a scary exception to the rule.

At this rate, Avatar, which has already eclipsed last year’s The Dark Knight to take its place as the 4^th highest grossing film of all-time, will soon come second to James Cameron’s $1.8 billion monster-hit Titanic. Whether it can surpass Titanic remains to be seen, but Cameron has done it yet again, and given us not just a spectacular film that leads the way into the future of filmmaking…but has given a box-office story that will, like Titanic, take years to be equaled. This one is for the history books.

P.S.- Avatar has registered the highest numbers ever for a New Year’s Day even!