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Media

“Avatar” Becomes No.2 Film In History Of The Universe

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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It seems inevitable that movies about odd aliens, supernatural events, and bizarre figments of writers’ imaginations rise weightlessly to the top of box office receipt lists. “Avatar” became the No.2 grossing film of all time as it moved above various versions of “Star Wars”, “Harry Potter”, “Lord of the Rings”, and “Jurassic Park.” “Titanic”, still the top grossing film ever, is the only movie related to a historical event among the 47 movies on the highest grossing list. “The Passion of the Christ”, at No. 48 barely qualifies as fact, and then only among Christians.

“Avatar”, made by director James Cameron, who also made “Titanic”, reached $1.335 in global sales. The “Titanic” record is $1.843 billion and “Avatar” appears to be on a pace to surpass it.

The success of “Avatar” makes improbable twins out of director of Cameron and Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp (NYSE:NWS), which owns “Avatar’s” distributor Twentieth Century Fox. The income from the movie should contribute substantially to News Corp’s earnings for both the fourth quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010.

Hollywood may have turned briefly to small films with small budgets in the hopes that a studio could make a dozen moderately profitable gems a year. The recent success of “Avatar”, “The Dark Knight”, and “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” will almost certainly change that. It is time for the movie business to swing for the fences again.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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