Heh, the drop-off has been far more precipitous than it was with Avatar, which surprises me a bit. If you look at the first 6 weeks, the % loss in gross for weeks 2-6 goes:
-39.8%
-39.5%
-53.1%
-37.8%
-22.0%
That’s each week’s change from the previous week’s. Whereas for Avatar it went:
+6.9% (second week actually grossing more than the first week, which is pretty unusual)
-33.9%
-27.8%
-5.1%
-28.1%
It’s still going to be in theaters a while yet, squeaking out every last dollar, but yeah, it doesn’t look like it will pass Avatar (or even Titanic in #2 at $2.186 B worldwide but it might still be able to pass that. Maybe). I still think Episode 9 will have a shot, especially with a little help from inflation.
Star Wars’ opening was so overloaded that it couldn’t run the same pattern. And notice that Avatar still played at 3000 theaters in the 8th weekend. Star Wars is at 2262.
Star Wars is very much like Beatles’ songs in 1964. They would hit #1 fast and be off the charts in 10 weeks because everybody who wanted one ran out and bought it the first chance they had.
Looking at some numbers, I think Titanic did set one record that will likely never be broken: it’s biggest day at the box office occurred 57 days after it was released. A little bit of reasoning about the nature of the movie and its timing should give y’all the answer as to what day this was, but for those of you who don’t want to be bothered…