14 DAY TRIAL // James Cameron’s “Avatar,” also dubbed in the media the movie that never quits, saw re-release over the weekend in 3D and IMAX 3D – and fell beyond even the most pessimist expectations.
As moviegoers (and not just Cameron fans) must know, “Avatar” literally wrote history shortly after it hit theaters late last year, moving then to make billions in theaters worldwide.
Right now, it’s the highest-grossing film ever to be made and, to Cameron’s own credit, second to it comes only another one of his movies, the Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet-starring “Titanic.”
Consequently, when Cameron and 20th Century Fox announced that they would re-release the film with a few extra minutes, the world simply assumed it would make a killing at the box office once more.
As E! Online puts it, it was believed the movie would gross no less than $15 million in its first weekend, which is, to be honest, an impressive amount even for a new release, let alone for a film that has been out for almost an entire year.
People still turned out to see “Avatar” but they weren’t in such impressive numbers as to generate this kind of grossing. Still, the $4 million in sales helped it go past $750 million domestically.
“The world’s biggest movie was back. Moviegoers weren’t so much,” E! writes. While the more recent ticket sales carried “Avatar” over the $750 million mark domestically, it came fell very short from initial expectations.
“Everybody from prognosticators to the competition expected Avatar to gross something in the neighborhood of $15 million because it was, well, Avatar. In the end, it grossed $4 million,” E! goes on to say.
In this light, “Avatar” was a flop because it failed to rise to expectations and perform as solidly as it had in the past.
On the other hand, one can’t simply ignore the fact that this movie has been out and making good money since what feels like forever.
“Basically, Avatar lost the expectations game. In the real world, the film upped its domestic haul to $753.8 million. No, not bad for a film that you’ve owned long enough to require a good dusting. And, yes, we should all ‘flop’ like that,” E! also points out.