Avatar Becomes Fifth Movie to Pass $1 Billion Mark

That makes two movies for Director James Cameron.

The 430 million dollar movie Avatar became the fifth movie in history to pass through the 1 billion dollar mark in unadjusted inflation worldwide sales. It is now, so far, the fourth highest grossing movie of all time at $1.0188 billion, surpassing The Dark Knight which is at $1.0019 billion.

Only three films have higher sales, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest at $1.0662 billion, The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King at $1.1191 and Cameron’s previous film Titanic with a staggering $1.8429 billion.

The movie also broke the record for fastest climb to 1 billion dollars – 17 days. It also now holds the highest second-weekend and third-weekend sales. Previous holders for those titles were The Dark Knight and Spiderman. In the third-weekend battle, Avatar beat the record of Spiderman’s $45 million by raking in $68 million – a drop of only 10% from the previous weekend.

The movie is already the highest grossing film in Russia and it is yet to open in the very lucrative market of China.

At this rate that the movie is showing, the film is projected to climb to the second spot ahead of Return of the King giving Cameron the two highest spots.