It was quite a weekend at the box office, with records tumbling left, right and centre. As we reported yesterday, Sherlock Holmes took the most money ever on Christmas Day, but that was pretty minor compared to what was going on elsewhere at the box office.
With the US box office taking a total of over $280 million over the festive period, it set a record for the biggest weekend in history, overtaking the $253 million grossed when The Dark Knight debuted in July 2008. Previous recent record weekends have relied on one new movie taking over $100 million to push the total to massive levels, but what makes this record more exceptional is that it did it by having several movies taking a lot of money, even if none of them got close to taking a record amount of its own. That said, it is the first time three films have taken more than $50 million at the US box office in a single weekend, with Avatar, Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks 2 all taking more than that over the weekend.
At the international box office, 20th Century Fox was also cheering, as with Avatar taking another $145 million outside the US over the weeks, it pushed the studio’s total international gross for the year to $2.263 billion, which is a new record, overtaking the $2.24 billion Warner Bros. made in 2007. Thanks to massive takes earlier in the year for the likes of Ice Age 3 and Wolverine and now a very good performance from Avatar, it’s ensured it’s been a massive year for 20th Century Fox.
Incidentally, the studio is certainly going to start thinking its gargantuan investment in James Cameron’s Avatar was money well spent, as after only 10 days it’s grossed $617.3 million around the world, which already puts it at number seven on the worldwide box office list for the year. We’ll now have to wait and see if it can continue its impressive run and unseat Harry Potter 6 at number one, which took $929 million in the summer.
With the US box office having already reached record levels when it passed the $10 billion mark for the year for the first time last week, this really has been a massive year at the cinema, despite the recession.