'Avatar' passes 'Legion' and 'Tooth Fairy'

By Sarah Sluis

Avatar grabbed the top spot domestically once again, dipping 16% to gross $36 million. Overseas, it did even better, breaking the record set by Titanic. Its cumulative gross of $1.288 billion abroad bested that of Titanic, which finished at $1.242 billion abroad. Titanic still holds the record for domestic box office and worldwide box office (the sum of domestic and abroad). Domestically, no movie has been number one for six weeks in a row since Titanic. Now, I just want to know what director James Cameron's next project is--will Avatar 2 come to fruition?

Legion opened in second place with $18.2 million, half the gross of Avatar. Demon-angels and creepy grandmas and ice cream men just never get old. Last year, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, another male-skewing horror/sci-fi mix, opened at $20 million, so the two did roughly similar business.

Tooth Fairy opened two spots lower at number four with $14.5 million, significantly lower than Dwayne Johnson's past two starrers. 2007's The Game Plan, which had a similar set-up that played on Johnson's star persona, opened at $22.9 million. Last year's Race to Witch Mountain opened at $24.4 million. The kid-oriented competition wasn't significant either: The Spy Next Door fell to number ten this week with a $4.7 million gross, and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel finished its fifth week at the box office in eighth place with $6.5 million. The Rock may be losing his kid base. Good thing his next film, The Other Guys, appears to be an older-skewing comedy.

Extraordinary Measures opened at number seven with $7 million. The Blind Side-esque movie played well in smaller cities and underperformed in big ones, giving distributor CBS Films reason to believe this movie will have strong staying power in less urban areas, where moviegoers often take awhile to catch up with the latest releases.

This Friday romcom When in Rome opens alongside Edge of Darkness, a crime thriller starring Mel Gibson.