Screen Gems

UPDATE: Final numbers on Monday show Dear John grossed $30.5 million over the weekend, down nearly $2 million from estimates, and not enough to set a new Super Bowl weekend record. Avatar's final number slipped to $22.9 million, as the big game sacked movie theaters.  

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Down goes Avatar!

The Channing Tatum-Amanda Seyfried romantic drama Dear John unseated James Cameron's record-busting blockbuster at the box office, with a far-bigger-than-expected $32.4 million Friday-Sunday take, per estimates.

Avatar, which saw its weekend winning streak end at seven, didn't get knocked out cold. It gobbled up another $23.6 million, and upped its all-time domestic haul to $630.1 million.

More on the weekend that was:

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WETA, 20th Century Fox

Put a fork in Titanic. She's done.

On the same day Avatar scored nine Oscar nominations, James Cameron's sci-fi epic grossed an estimated $2.7 million, Fox said, and upped its domestic box office total to $601.1 million.

Make that, a Titanic-topping $601.1 million.

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ILM / Twentieth Century Fox; Warner Bros. Pictures

Is there nothing, or no one who can challenge Avatar? Well, other than Porky's?

James Cameron's box-office streamroller flattened the returning Mel Gibson to claim its seventh straight box-office win. One more, and it'll tie three other films, including the aforementioned Porky's, for the sixth-longest stay at No. 1.

Avatar grossed an estimated $30 million Friday-Sunday, and handily led Gibson's Edge of Darkness ($17.1 million) and Kristen Bell's When in Rome ($12.5 million). More details:

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WETA, 20th Century Fox

UPDATE: It's official—Avatar's total haul hit $1.859 billion on Monday, surpassing Titanic's $1.843 billion by $16 million, according to Fox.
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James Cameron did it to James Cameron.

Cameron's unstoppable Avatar hit $1.29 billion at the international box office, Fox said today, passing Cameron's Titanic mark of $1.24 billion to set the new record. By Monday, the studio estimates, Avatar will top Titanic's worldwide gross of $1.85 billion to become Earth's biggest moneymaker of all time.

And, no, the film is not stopping there.

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WETA/ 20th Century Fox

Dark Knight, you're next.

Per studio estimates, Avatar will gross $11.8 million today, bring its four-day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend take to $54.6 million, push its domestic haul past $500 million, and continue its romp through the history books.

And you thought James Cameron would be satisified with last night's Golden Globes…

Here's a look at where Avatar ranks all-time, plus holiday-weekend updates on the rest of the Top 10:

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WETA/ 20th Century Fox

UPDATE: Final figures released Monday show Avatar actually broke $50 million over the weekend. The movie's overall domestic take stands at $430.8 million. And counting. And counting. And…  

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So where is this going to end?

For the fourth straight weekend, Avatar was the top movie at the box office, Sunday estimates show. Its $48.5 million helped it take Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen's crown as 2009's biggest moneymaker.

The world's No. 2 movie of all-time as of last week, the James Cameron epic used the weekend to pass Spider-Man and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest on the domestic list, and set itself up to rise to No. 3 in those rankings perhaps as soon as next weekend. (Bye, Star Wars, E.T. and friends…) 

So, no, Leap Year never really had a chance. Titanic, however, does.

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20th Century Fox

Looks like James Cameron is the King of Middle Earth, too.

With $1.14 billion worldwide and counting, Avatar has now overtaken the $1.1 billion raked in by 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to become the second-highest-grossing film in history.

In fact, Avatar is going so strong that what once seemed an out-of-this-world impossibility now seems within the realm of (virtual) reality. If the 20th Century Fox movie, which screens in both 2-D and 3-D formats, keeps up its current pace, it could catch the $1.8 billion in global ticket sales tallied by the Oscar-winning filmmaker's own Titanic.

It that wasn't enough (and it never is in Tinseltown), Fox's FX cable network has reportedly paid upward of $25 million for the TV rights to Avatar, which will premiere in 2012.

And that makes Cameron's blue folk even more green.

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Get all the scoop on Avatar's shot at Oscar's top prize here.

WETA/ 20th Century Fox

We guess money really does grow on trees.

James Cameron's Avatar has become the third-biggest grossing film of all time, with a worldwide haul of more than $1.1 billion. It sailed past the $1.07 billion plundered by Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.

Most of Avatar's coin has actually come from overseas, raking in $731.2 million internationally compared to $367.5 million domestically.

The sci-fi epic is now on track to dethrone The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which tallied $1.12 billion in global ticket sales, any day now.

While Avatar will likely fall short of Titanic's record $1.84 billion, Cameron can take solace in having the top two-grossing films in history. 

And that means he's still King of the World.

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Avatar, which makes buzz, not just money, is up for best drama at the Golden Globes. Check out all the contenders in our Notable Nominees gallery.

20th Century Fox

Not so fast, Transformers.

2009's over, but the year-end box-office standings are still being written and rewritten, thanks to James Cameron's Avatar, which took in another $68.3 million this weekend and could end up going down as last year's No. 1 movie.

"This is unbelievable," Hollywood.com box-office analyst Paul Dergarabedian said today.

After just 17 days in theaters, Avatar has grossed $352.1 million domestically. Worldwide, it has blown past $1 billion, not to mention The Dark Knight, to stand tall as the fourth-biggest moneymaker ever. Already.

Did somebody say Titanic?

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Warner Bros. Pictures

For a while there, Sherlock Holmes had James Cameron outwitted. But only for a while.

Cameron's Avatar ended up the biggest, fattest movie of a big, fat box-office weekend, with an estimated $75 million Friday-Sunday. The Robert Downey Jr.-ized Sherlock Holmes finished second, but didn't settle for second, with a bigger-than-expected $65.3 million.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel ($50.2 million) and Meryl Streep's It's Complicated ($22.1 million) got in on the record-breaking holiday action as well.

More box-office highlights, including the debut of Heath Ledger's last film, and a Top 10 farewell to New Moon:

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Summit Entertainment

The Twilight sequel was kinda popular. The Transformers sequel was kinda gigantic. Land of the Lost was neither.

But you didn't need us to tell you that. You needed us to digest the box-office year that was, and spit out: the Nine Things About 2009 You Didn't Know but Are About to Learn:

1. New Moon beat Harry Potter. In bang for buck. New Moon made more than 12 times its $50 million budget ($635 million worldwide); Half-Blood Prince "only" made about four times its $250 million price tag.

2. Harry Potter beat everything. The sixth boy-wizard adventure was the year's overall No. 1 film, with $924 million in the worldwide bank, even if Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was the No. 1 film domestically—and the only one to top $400 milllion stateside.

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