Avatar Gets A Fifth Weekend On Top In The UK

By now it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that Avatar is continuing to set records. Yesterday it became only the fourth film to reach $500 million in the US. Today it's been announced that in only two weeks it's become the highest grossing movie ever in China, grossing over $73 million in the country (there are even reports the film is so popular that scalped tickets are selling for four times their face value).

And in the UK it's continuing it impressive run, making another £5.5 million over the weekend. It's a figure few films achieve in their first weekend, let alone their fifth, and smashes the previous fifth weekend record of £3.6 million, set by Titanic. It actually marked a 16% increase on last weekend's take, probably because the overall box office was down then due to the severe weather and so people who missed it then have been going now.

While Return of the King had made more money in the UK in this amount of time since its release, that film's take was already tapering off by this point, while Avatar is just running and running. It's still got a way to go before it beats Mamma Mia's all-time high of £69 million, but as it already stands at £49 million, it may well outdo the ABBA film in a few week's time. Interestingly though, while the film is now the second highest grossing film ever globally, it's only at number 15 in the UK at the minute, although likely to storm up the ranks very soon.

It means that new entries, such as Up In The Air and The Book Of Eli had to settlie for lower placed starts on the box office chart. Up in the Air took fifth place with £1.3 million, which isn't a bad start for that kind of movie. However Book Of Eli disappointed by placing sixth with £1.2 million, continuing Denzel Washington's run of actions films that do well in the US but no one is fussed about in the UK.

Take a look below for the full UK Top 10 for the weekend of January 15th-17th.