Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
Avatar was pulling in 100 million dollar weekends internationally for 6 weekends after it came out. Star Wars has already dropped under 100 million internationally in it's 3rd weekend (96 million). Avatar kept pulling in weekends in the 20-30 million range (which are solid opening weekends for an average movie) for more than 2 months after it came out. It was released Internationally on Dec 18th 2009 and didn't dip under 20 million in the international box office until March 5th. Star Wars has another 15 territories to open in though including China which will help but as others have mentioned China isn't a big market for Star Wars.
I do think Disney delayed the Chinese release so that they could call it the biggest movie in North American history and all that in their Chinese marketing which will make a bigger impact then a Star Wars movie could have had on its own. That will probably give it a big boost. I still don't think it'll be enough to challenge Avatar globally but I hope I'm wrong! Who knows, maybe the Chinese embrace it like we did!
Avatar International Weekends:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/...&id=avatar.htm
Star Wars International Weekends:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/...=starwars7.htm |
You fail to mention that after those 6 weeks Avatar's international take fell off a cliff.
So without the release of China SW is about 40 billion below where Avatar was in weekend 3 internationally. And while China won't be a huge market for SW, it will contribute 20+ million for the first few weekends and probably give SW 200-300 million overall extra box office.
Star wars has also been absolutely destroying Avatar domestically:
Week 1: SW ahead by 253 million.
Week 2: SW ahead by 115 million.
Star Wars is also the type of movie that people are going to on the weekdays to avoid lines. Your foreign numbers only look at weekends. The weekday numbers for Star Wars have been incredible. SW should sail into 3rd all time this next week and then will easily pass Avatar before its done.