Avatar: Fastest Film To Gross $1 Billion

James Cameron is all smiles. His movie Avatar is zooming around the globe, unstoppable. It has raked in a billion dollars worldwide and is still going strong. The 20th Century Fox film has been on number 1 for the third straight weekend. Just 17 days into its release, the movie has grossed 352 million dollars in the US itself, while pulling in 670 million dollars from the rest of the world. That's a staggering 1.02 billion dollars, and 3 weeks are not over yet. A contributing factor is that since Avatar is a 3D animation film, its tickets are priced a few dollars more than the normal 2D movies.

There have been other movies which opened much stronger than Avatar, but the steam in them ran out sooner than expected, while Avatar is strong and steady, which is why it's raking in all the moolah. Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston said, "It's like a runaway freight train. It just keeps doing business. Here's what's happening: I think everybody has to see Avatar once. Even people who don't normally go to the movies, they've heard about it and are saying, 'I have to see it.' Then there's those people seeing it multiple times."

So now that makes it 5 films ever to have crossed the $1 bn mark. James Cameron's previous film, Titanic, released in 1997 grossed $1.8 billion worldwide. That makes him the only filmmaker to direct two movies that have topped $1 billion. The Lord of the Rings - $1.13 bn, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - $1.06 bn, The Dark Knight - $1.01 bn, are the other movies with this distinction. Avatar will easily jump to the number 2 slot, and the only thing left to be seen is whether it can surpass Titanic as the most successful movie ever. But Cameron is sure to be the only filmmaker ever to have directed 2 movies over a billion, and also the 2 most successful films ever made.