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King of the World... Again
Director James Cameron breaks his own record as Avatar sinks Titanic to become the highest box office earner of all time in Australia.
Thanks to rising ticket prices, more cinema screens, and the fact that cinema audiences always enjoy a good spectacle, James Cameron's sprawling sci-fi epic Avatar has quickly and definitively become the biggest movie money spinner in local cinema history. On the back of strong reviews (with only a few minor quibbles sneaking in amongst the happy hyperbole), positive word of mouth, and a highly successful blanket media campaign (with the scope and scale of the film even reported on by mainstream television news broadcasts), Avatar has amassed a staggering $AUS63,240,995 in less than a month, effortlessly sailing past Titanic's still impressive $57,645,827. This figure, however, could be just the tip of the iceberg for Avatar.
With school holidays still in full swing, repeat viewings escalating, word of mouth continuing to do its thing, and the very strong possibility of multiple Oscar nominations, Cameron's thoughtful, beautifully constructed action adventure saga could even get to $80,000,000 or $90,000,000 in this country. That would make it a record likely to stand for a very, very long time.
Now sitting astride the Top Ten list over hobbits and elves (all three Lord Of The Rings films), a boy wizard (Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince), a jolly green ogre (Shrek 2), a couple of duelling costumed psychos (The Dark Knight), and a knife wielding Aussie alpha male (Crocodile Dundee), Avatar is further proof of James Cameron's status of one of this generation's most gifted, commercially astute filmmakers. He is also, needless to say, living out a childhood dream. "As a kid, I was always building things just to see if they would work," James Cameron told FILMINK recently. "So nothing's really changed. All filmmakers are ultimately who they were when they were fourteen-years-old at some level. Whatever you thought was cool when you were a teenager is what you're doing now as a filmmaker."
Even in his wildest teen dreams, however, we'll bet that James Cameron never even imagined that he'd be quite this successful...