Avatar breaks box office records

James Cameron’s Avatar started the year on high, taking £6 million at the box office in the first weekend of 2010, well ahead of its rival releases.

Demand for the film has continued to rocket since its release before Christmas, when more than 35,000 tickets were sold for the film in just four days.  The BFI’s IMAX online booking site even crashed due to the volume of people trying to get hold of tickets for the new movie, and as such the cinema started opening its doors 24 hours just to get people through the door.

At the time, Justin Johnson, head of operations at BFI IMAX, said: “We expect to beat all records with this film and our advance sales figures are already suggesting that we have a Box Office smash on our hands.”

Even now, tickets to see the hit 3D film at the BFI IMAX are sold out well into February.  Avatar – created by Cameron, the Oscar-winning director of Titanic – has already broken records to become the fastest film ever to achieve $1 billion (£625.6 million) in ticket sales around the world since its release on December 16.

In the UK, Avatar has taken £32.8 million to date – with box office revenues of around £8.5 million on its opening weekend 3 weeks ago.

The film is just one of the successes that have helped UK box office takings to break the £1 billion mark for the first time in history.

2010 is expected to be even bigger for the UK film industry, with more than 550 films being released this year (which is around 11 a week).  It is predicted that around 172 million people will flock to the cinema in 2010, which will help the medium maintain its position as the favourite out of home activity.

Other Christmas releases to help boost cinema figures in the first weekend of the year were Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, Alvin and the Chipmonks 2 and Did You Hear About the Morgans?, which all took over £1 million.

Box office figures are available on MediaTel’s Cinema database .