SKYFALL DRAWS RECORD CROWDS IN CHINA

The James Bond movie Skyfall, which opened last Monday in China, took in $35 million during its first week, according to the website 21cn.com. It was a record for a 2D film, the website said, and was exceeded only by James Cameron’s 3D Avatar, which opened in China with $46 million in its first week […]

WRITER LOSES PLAGIARISM SUIT AGAINST JAMES CAMERON

A children’s book writer is presumably out the cost of his legal fees after becoming the latest person to sue James Cameron for plagiarism. On Monday federal Judge Manuel Real threw out Elijah Schkeiban’s claim that Cameron had used elements of his screenplay Bats and Butterflies, based on his series of children’s books, in Avatar. […]

IT’S OFFICIAL: THE AVENGERS IS NO. 3, BEHIND TITANIC, AVATAR

Disney/Marvel’s The Avengers was expected to cross the $1.5-billion mark at the worldwide box office this weekend following the decision by Disney to put the film back into 1,705 theaters for the Labor Day weekend. The studio estimated that it earned $1.7 million over the three-day weekend and $2.2 million over the four-day holiday. That […]

AVENGERS LIKELY TO KEEP DARK SHADOWS IN ITS SHADE

As The Avengers continues to steamroll over the box office, it’s likely to flatten the the latest Johnny Depp-Tim Burton collaboration, Dark Shadows — a film that would otherwise have easily become the top ticket seller. Today’s (Friday) Los Angeles Times said that it expects the opening of the movie to be “good but not […]

HUNGER GAMES IN 4TH WIN — FIRST TO DO SO SINCE AVATAR (Update)

Lionsgate’s Hunger Games has become the first film since Avatar to win four weekends in a row. (Avatar remained at No. 1 for seven weeks.) With an estimated gross of $21.5 million, it easily held off challenges from three newcomers. Its closest rival was Fox’s The Three Stooges, which nevertheless performed far better than industry […]

TITANIC IS JUST THAT IN CHINA

Underlining the Chinese box office’s increasing clout, Titanic 3D raked in an astonishing $58 million at 2,600 theaters in China over the weekend, Daily Variety reported on its website today (Sunday). With an average of more than $22,000 per theater, China’s total represented two-thirds of the weekend’s $88.2 million overseas box office for the film, […]

TO DIVE OR NOT TO DIVE? FOR CAMERON, IT’S BOTH

On the same day that it was announced that James Cameron would be replaced by Martin Campbell as director of The Dive, reports emerged that Cameron was himself poised to embark on a dive of historic significance. The Titanic director, in a one-person submersible machine named the Mermaid Sapphire, is about to descend nearly seven […]

MOST-PIRATED MOVIES ARE ALSO BOX-OFFICE HITS

The most-pirated movies of all time are also some of the biggest box-office winners, according to TorrentFreak.com, which tracks BitTorrent use on the Internet. According to the website, Avatar, with 21 million downloads, is the most pirated movie ever, with The Dark Knight and 2007’s Transformers tied for second place with about 19 million. Avatar, […]

AVATAR THEME PARK RIDE COMING TO DISNEY WORLD

Get set for Avatar: The Theme-Park Ride. The Walt Disney Co. announced on Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with director James Cameron, his producing partner Jon Landau, and 20th Century Fox to develop a theme-park ride based on Cameron’s movie at Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. Work on […]

CHINA FALLS UNDER POTTER’S SPELL

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 made an impressive debut in China where it earned $25.5 million in about 4,200 theaters over the weekend. The Chinese haul kept the Potter finale ahead overseas, where it is now playing in 61 countries, for the fourth weekend in a row. Its worldwide total now stands […]

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