Boom! If the HMFIC should lose on Oscar night, at least he’ll have another $1.843 billion in box-office receipts on which to dry his tears. Early yesterday, moviegoers with nothing better to do on a Monday helped James Cameron’s Avatar beat James Cameron’s Titanic as history’s top-grossing film worldwide. As it stands, Avatar has Titanic’s international record beat by $50 million, which means it’s still $50 million short of that movie’s domestic one (though that record, too, should fall sometime this week). If you’re wondering just how much raised-priced ticketing played a role in all this, the answer is a lot: Avatar is still only history’s 26th highest-grossing domestic movie with inflation factored in. Even so, with these dollars, Cameron can just make Zoe Saldana an Oscar himself out of unobtainium.
