Can "Avatar" make $500 million? The investors sure hope so… and they want it to make more!
James Cameron has been slaving away at this movie for months and is expecting I suppose a hit on the order of his "Titanic". With a worldwide gross of $1.8 billion dollars it is truly a remarkable feat. But how will "Avatar" compare?
From all the talk now, to the previews I have seen myself in the theaters it does not seem to disappoint. Yes, the Avatars are 9 foot tall blue speckled creatures but you could absolutely swear that they are real, and that Avalon was a real place that you never want to leave because of it's beauty.
The fact that it completely immerses you with 3-D will be another up and down issue they will deal with, because while that's wonderful at a theatre with a massive screen, it could hurt DVD sales… post theatre.
The latest reports from Time Magazine had the budget reported at over $300 million, staggeringly. But with more to consider like marketing the total budget could exceed $500 million. YES, that's a half a billion dollars. This would make "Avatar" the most expensive movie ever! With no other movies coming anywhere close. The only thing that would compare, and not very well might I say would be "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" with a total figure of about $300 million.
The figures however don't seem to be stirring up too much trouble on the inside. The investors, who include: News Corp., with a reported $30 billion in sales, and two outside companies, Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media, are happy with estimates that say if the domestic gross hits $250 million they can be in the black… or in lamens term, make money.
It'll be interesting to follow the hype in the next few weeks before the huge release and to see if all this talk simply leads to people going to the show… which inevitably is what they want anyways.
-Rachid Fakhoury
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