The difference to TDK has been reduced to $12.6 million after 24 days.
Avatar owns TDK by next Saturday, still on track to pass $900 million domestic

ROTK and Titanic both dropped more on their 2nd sundays after the hollidays, though.

haha, your prediction is funny!!
but i hope so

no doubt.

BJ likes

Dunno if football is that big a deal, appart from Superbowl.

it is, for films affected the affects are a minimum of 10% per day, I think a sub 30% drop is in play.

So ROTK and Titanic didn't face football?

they were affected but not nearly as much as other films, Avatar fall into that category but I still expect a phenomenal sunday hold.

Um... ok.

its selling out many 3d shows in nyc just like yesterday. but it does not have as many late shows compared to yesterday. still it should beat estimates for sure. i am hoping at least 49m+.

its still on the same exact pace here, I'm hoping it can keep it up till 9pm that would be enough for a 20%-30% drop.

When it comes to legs, Avatar is not your average Quadrupede, it is an Hexapede!!

Well it should be around 14-15M but to match my predictions I am going with 16M

Sunday - 16.1M

Football on average is so much bigger since 2003. And EXTREMELY bigger than in 1998. The Saturday night game drew 30 mil!!! The afternoon game ended today at what, 8PM? Plenty of time to catch a later movie.

No matter how horrible my predictions are for Avatar, well at least I will always have Saturday.

Theater/Screen Sampling

Avatar has lost on avg about one showing from last Sunday at the theaters I have been monitoring. At one theater it's last showing was at 6:00 p.m. and the Shitmunks was playing at 7:30. Avatar had only three showings and Daybreakers had five!?! Some theaters that had sell-outs last Sunday had no sell-outs for any format of Avatar today. At the stronger theaters for Avatar, there were some non sell-outs for IMAX which was not the case compared to the same times last Sunday. The same thing for 3D screens, the sell-outs ended between 6:00-8:00 pm this week at the better theaters, when compared to last week when they ended from 8:00-10:00 pm.

I sensed the pattern of less sell-outs when I made my prediction and was fully prepared to backtrack before 10:00 pm if the pattern did not continue.

This may not mean as much as it appears, because a movie might not register a sell out, but that showing might be at 90-95% capacity, which is not much of a drop. A lost show may not mean that much overall, because the previous week's show may have been poorly attended, hence the reason it was dropped. However, the overall pattern of less shows along with less sell-outs for the remaining shows across the spectrum of my theater sample leads me to believe the drops were stronger than last Sunday. Again my sample may not be representative of the nation as whole.

1st Sunday in January Compared to 2nd Sunday

Theoretically, this Sunday should have increased drops compared to last Sunday, because some people took Monday off for a long weekend last week or kids were out of school. For 1998 and 1999, the comparable avg. Sunday drops were 10-15% worse for non kid/family movies compared to the previous Sunday. The last two years that pattern has not shown itself, as most movies have shown small increases or drops compared to the previous Sunday. The NFL play-offs schedule has changed over that time. In 1998 the Championship games were this weekend. In 1999 until 2009, the Divisional games were this weekend, and this year the Wild-card games were this weekend. Either that pattern has disappeared, the NFL play-off schedule had an impact, or perhaps weather had an impact as the weather seemed mild the last two years compared to 1998, 1999, and this year. The drops could just be random and there is no real discernable pattern.

Avatar's 4th Sunday Drop Compared to Titanic and ROTK

BOM has Avatar dropping only 34.7%, which is better than Titanic. I find that unlikely. Let's compare the two through the first three Sundays. On their first Sunday Avatar had the better drop, but Titanic had a sizable increase on Saturday while Avatar dropped on Saturday, so that impacted the comparison. On the second Sunday, Titanic had the better drop by 1.4%, and on the third Sunday, it had the better drop by 2.6%. Why would this pattern suddenly change? It is possible the effect of Christmas and New Year’s falling on different days has some impact, but I think it is more likely that this pattern continues for a few more weeks. Titanic and ROTK had a similar close Sunday drops and the pattern continued until the Super Bowl when ROTK freed from the tyrannical drag of the NFL routinely had better Sunday drops than Titanic.

Secondly, on their comparable fourth Friday and Saturday, Titanic had the better increases. It seems counter-intuitive (although not abnormal) that Avatar would have the better drop.

Lastly, Titanic dropped 5.4% more its fourth Sunday than its third Sunday, and ROTK dropped 2.8% more its fourth Sunday than its third Sunday. Again, I find it difficult to believe that Avatar will drop only 1.4% more than last Sunday.

Sunday Gross Being Lower Than Friday Gross

2002-2009* Movies that Increased 50-75% on 2nd Saturday in January:
* Excluding 2006 & 2007 when MLK fell on the same weekend

FOTR 71.4% +450k
A Beautiful Mind 54%
Vanilla Sky 54.3%
Gosford Park 52.1%

Ali 57.1%
Joe Somebody 67.9%

Two Towers 70.4% +300k
About Schmidt 56.8%
Chicago 51.1%
Maid in Manhattan 55.4%

Drumline 64.4%
MBFGW 73.9%
Die Another Day
Star Trek Nemesis 61.1%
The Hours 50.1% (expansion)+33k

ROTK 75.1% +300k
Something’s Gotta Give 52.6%

House of Sand and Fog 54.4%
In America 71.6%
Lost In Translation 67.5% (expansion)+ $1k
Master and Commander 56.8%
Honey 52.9%
Mystic River 60.4%

The Aviator 51%
National Treasure 63.9%
Phantom of the Opera 53.3%

Finding Neverland 55.2%
Million Dollar Baby 60.4% (expansion) +35k
Sideways 64.5%
Hotel Rwanda 55.9% (expansion)+20k
Beyond the Sea 54.1%

National Treasure: Book of Secrets 58.2%
The Pirates Who Don’t Do Anything 74.2% +70k

The Savages 73.2% +7k

Marley and Me 59.3%

Slumdog Millionaire 55.6%
The Reader 55.3%
Milk 54.8%
Frost/Nixon 53.8%

Movies in Bold had increase on Sunday over Friday gross

4 out of 16 for movies in the top ten and 9 out of 39 for movies that made at least 100k on Saturday had Sunday's larger than Friday.

The amount of sell-outs Avatar has may make comparison to the movies on this list invalid. It's not that I don't think Avatar can have a better Sunday than its Friday, and it certainly could with adjustments to Friday and Saturday's actuals. I just don't believe people realize how unlikely it is for a movie to do it when it's Saturday increase was so moderate.

With all these factors, I don't think $15-16m Sunday predictions are very realistic even for Avatar.

Of course, Avatar will probably prove me wrong yet again, but at least I had some basis for my horrible estimate.

I think you really need to retire the top rated Yahoo list until they fix the rankings or website or whatever is wrong with it. Last week 25 of the top 30 movies of all-time were Russian movies most of which I had never heard, and this week 10 of the top 15 were released in the last 12 months which seems a bit suspect. 2009 was not exactly 1939 or 1959.

Now we all know that Avatar made 48.5M but when are the actuals coming in ???

Seriously it is late here and I am really impatient to get the exact numbers of Sunday (of course to predict Monday )

In the next hour i guess.

I bow down to you, BJ, you were right about sunday.

I'm gonna be offline for a couple of days so here are my next predictions:

$5,750,000 Monday
$6,325,000 Tuesday
$5,550,000 Wednesday
$5,750,000 Thursday
$12,525,000 Friday
$20,025,000 Saturday
$18,025,000 Sunday
$11,350,000 Monday

$50,575,000 3-Day Weekend
$61,925,000 4-Day Weekend

I'll eat my shoe if Avatar increases over the 3-day next weekend.

TITANIC did it, AVATANIC will do it...