James Cameron‘s Avatar has topped the weekend box office for the seventh week in a row. The sci-fi epic pulled in an esitamed $30 million for the weekend in the U.S., bringing Avatar within easy striking distance of breaking the domestic box office record currently held by Titanic.
Avatar has already broken nearly every other box office record out there, topping Titanic for highest grossing film of all time and taking the record for the highest grossing film world-wide. All that’s left is the U.S. domestic box office record and Avatar is expected to take that one as well within a few days.
Coming in second at the weekend box office was the Mel Gibson thriller Edge of Darkness, with $17.1 million. The romantic comedy When in Rome debuted in third with $12 million, followed by The Tooth Fairy, The Book of Eli and Legion rounding out the top five.
Avatar may seem like an astounding box office success, but adjust for inflation and the film might not even make the top ten. Films like Gone with the Wind, The Graduate and even 101 Dalmations would have topped it at the box office if you adjusted their earnings to today’s dollars, according to Box Office Mojo.
Chris Aronson of 20th Century Fox, however, says comparing box office sales in such a way doesn’t add up. “Back in 1939, the entertainment options were somewhat limited,” Aronson said. “That was a different world, when the only things competing with movies might be radio theater. It’s not a fair comparison.”
Whether or not Avatar can truly be called the biggest money-making film of all time, no one can argue the film’s success at the box office is spectacular. If someone had pitched us the plot for this movie and said it would make over a billion at the box office, we probably would have thought they were totally nuts.
>> Previously:Â Avatar Box Office Swamps Titanic Worldwide Record