Weekend Recap: “Avatar” leads way for biggest movie weekend ever

Did I say disappointing December? Well, it seemed everyone was just waiting until Christmas. The Box Office jumped up over 100 percent this past weekend for the highest grossing weekend of all time.

To let you know how incredible this weekend was: my prediction for the box office winner, Sherlock Holmes, broke the record for Christmas Day opening – and still lost to Avatar, who made almost the exact same amount of money as its first weekend. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel made the quietest $48 million ever thanks to the combined $137 million plus that “Holmes” and Avatar made.

1. Avatar – $75.6 M (weekend) … $212.7 M (gross)
2. Sherlock Holmes – $62.3 M … $62.3 M
3. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel – $48.8 M … $75.6 M
4. It’s Complicated – $22.1 M … $22.1 M
5. The Blind Side – $11.5 M … $184.1 M
6. Up in the Air – $11.3 M … $24 M
7. The Princess and the Frog – $9 M … $63.7 M
8. Nine – $5.4 M … $5.8 M
9. Did You Hear About the Morgans? – $5 M … $15.6 M
10. Invictus – $4 M … $23 M

I suppose I can live with only my second wrong prediction of the year considering “Holmes” did have a record-breaking weekend. It’s Avatar that deserves the credit however, with the second highest second weekend ranking only behind The Dark Knight. We’re looking at the beginning of an Avatar Trilogy to say the least. Check out this pretty cool James Cameron interview from the LA Times if you want to know more about where the sequel(s) would go and why they make sense

Other than stupidly thinking Avatar would drop almost in half from its first weekend, however, I pretty much nailed the Top 5, except The Blind Side managed to outdo studio estimates and beat Up in the Air by a couple hundred thousand for fifth. Freakin’ “Blind Side.”

Elsewhere in the Top 10, Nine had a very quiet debut with just more than $5 million, good for eight place. New Moon and A Christmas Carol finally leave our Top 10, the latter ironically so for Christmas weekend.