Box Office

The domination of James Cameron's 'Avatar' and its mostly male audience ended on the first day of its eighth weekend. Tears pouring out of the eyes of moviegoers watching Lasse Hallstrom's 'Dear John' in adjacent theaters first loosened 'Avatar's' grip on No. 1, and the ensuing flood washed it out of the spot completely.

On Friday, 'Dear John' more than doubled the business of 'Avatar,' selling $13.8 million worth of tickets to the blue people's $6.2 million. If estimates by Exhibitor Relations, Inc. hold up, 'Dear John' will have scored an astonishing $32.4 million opening weekend, producing a $9 million gap between it and 'Avatar,' now ensconced in second place.

Don't grieve for Cameron, however. 'Avatar's' $23.6 million take runs its domestic box office record to $630 million, a figure that may not be threatened until Cameron's next $200 million sci-fi, CGI epic, 'Battle Angel,' is released, probably in 2012.

John Travolta plays a trigger-happy CIA agent in 'From Paris With Love' and Channing Tatum plays a soldier desperately in love in 'Dear John, ' but neither of these past and present screen heartthrobs figures to stop James Cameron's 'Avatar' from sailing through to its eighth straight weekend atop the box office chart.

With nine Oscar nominations added to its Golden Globe awards, 'Avatar' is off to the February start that Cameron and his distributor Fox had planned months ago. I doubt they thought they would have broken 'Titanic's' records for domestic and worldwide box office receipts by this point, but here they are, clear of the field and with a tail-wind that will push them to their March 7 Oscar date and beyond.

Mel Gibson learned this weekend that American moviegoers are not as quick to forgive as he'd hoped. The Boston crime thriller 'Edge of Darkness,' which features Gibson in his first movie role since his drunk driving arrest and alleged anti-Semitic rant in 2006, grossed just $17.1 million over its opening weekend.

In contrast, the similarly themed 'Taken,' starring Liam Neeson, did $24.7 million on the same weekend last year. And 'Taken's' opening weekend was shortened by the fact that its target audience of young adult males took Sunday off to watch the Super Bowl.

'Edge of Darkness' certainly posed no threat to 'Avatar's' run at a seventh straight weekend atop the box office chart. James Cameron's sci-fi epic added another $30 million to a world-beating record that now stands at about $595 million; it is within two or three days of passing 'Titanic's' domestic box office record of $601 million. As if it needed more help, Tuesday's announced Oscar nominations are bound to give 'Avatar' more tailwind heading into its eighth weekend.

This past decade has been the best of times and the worst of times for Mel Gibson. Between 2000 and 2002, Gibson starred in four films that grossed more than $600 million domestically, and in 2004 he co-wrote, directed and produced a movie that grossed more than $370 million all by itself.

That last film, 'The Passion of the Christ,' marks the moment where his non-monetary fortunes began to sink. 'Passion of the Christ' was No. 1 among true believers, but among others, it was widely seen as anti-Semitic, and rants by Gibson's father, a Holocaust denier who labeled the Second Vatican Council a 'Masonic plot backed by Jews,' made it seem as if Mel was simply a chip off the old block-head.

It has taken James Cameron's 'Avatar' just 38 days to reach the $550 million mark in domestic ticket sales and if it can average $6.3 million a day over the next eight days, it will have eclipsed 'Titanic's' record by the morning of the Oscar nominations. Not that 'Avatar' will need any further assistance, but most Best Picture nominees see huge boosts in attendance immediately afterwards.

Last year's eventual Best Picture winner 'Slumdog Millionaire' had a 65% increase in sales during the three weeks after it scored 10 Academy Award nominations in late January. When this year's nominees are announced Feb. 2, 'Avatar' will be on at least that many ballots and besides threatening 'Titanic's' domestic record, it will have certainly passed 'Titanic' as the biggest worldwide blockbuster.

With a Golden Globe wind at its back and facing a trio of new releases whose greatest threat is 'Tooth Fairy,' 'Avatar' will sail through its sixth straight weekend atop the box office chart and significantly narrow the gap between its current domestic gross of about $515 million and the $601 million record held by 'Titanic.'

'Tooth Fairy' stars Dwayne (The Actor Formerly Known as 'The Rock') Johnson as a hockey thug forced to learn the value of teeth by playing the actual Tooth Fairy. I have only seen the trailer for this family comedy and agree with USA Today critic Claudia Puig's warning that the movie "will make your teeth ache and your skin crawl."

If you saw 'Avatar' on Martin Luther King Day, you may have bought the ticket that pushed James Cameron's freshly-crowned Golden Globe winner over the $500 million mark in domestic box office. And you would have helped it become the fastest movie in history to hit that mark, a mere 32 days.

'Avatar's' next big target: the $601 million domestic gross of Cameron's 'Titanic' in 1998. Once thought impossible, 'Avatar's' takedown of its elder sibling is now inevitable.

During an interview with 'Today' show host Matt Lauer this week, Denzel Washington revealed that he has nearly finished his third complete reading of the New Testament.

I don't know if that's the version of the Bible he's carrying in his new film, 'The Book of Eli,' but it will take a miracle of Biblical proportions for 'Eli' to knock 'Avatar' out of the No. 1 spot on the weekend box office chart.

That is not to cast aspersions on Washington. The man is a certified movie star, an actor whose name above a movie's title guarantees a big opening weekend. Over the past decade, Washington's wide-opening pictures have averaged $23.9 million over their first three days. The best weekend was for 2007's 'American Gangster,' which opened to a whopping $43.6 million, and the lowest was $16.2 million for 2003's 'Out of Time.'

Astronauts may have debunked the age-old myth that the Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from space, but if they were to take a look right now, they might be able to see James Cameron's 'Avatar.' His blue giant has been circling the globe in a neon blur for nearly four weeks now, vacuuming coin-of-the-realm out of the hands of moviegoers from Argentina to the Ukraine.

But, wait. Before we declare 'Avatar' the Greatest Attraction in the Solar System, let's acknowledge the sizable minority of Earthlings who are not impressed.

Taking in $48.5 million over the weekend at the North American box office, James Cameron's 'Avatar' has become the first major motion-picture release in film history to be driven almost entirely by 3-D ticket sales.

Indeed, in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, 80 percent of theatrical revenue for the film came from 3-D ticket sales. And, according to estimates from Fox, a staggering $340 million of the film's $429 million domestic tally has come from 3-D engagements.