'Avatar' Tops US B-O for 5th Weekend

JAN 18, 2010 - For a fifth straight weekend Avatar controlled the US box office setting another milestone as it moved past Star Wars into third place on the all-time North American box-office chart.

It brought in an estimated US$41.3 over the weekend, bringing its total to US$491.7M. Avatar has made an astounding US$1.6 billion worldwide in only five weeks and the only question now is when it'll beat Titanic, not if.

In third place after a nationwide rollout is Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones, a tale of a murdered girl who narrates her life from the beyond.

Here is the Top 5 North American B-O studio estimates for Jan 15 - 17, 2010 weekend, in terms of rank, Movie name (studio), Weekend takings in USD, (Cumulative gross, USD) and week on chart, courtesy of Boxofficemojo.

1. Avatar (Fox) $41.3 million ($491.8 million) 5

2. The Book of Eli (Warner Bros) $31.6 million ($31.6 million) 1

3. The Lovely Bones (Paramount) $17.1 million ($17.5 million) 6

4. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (Fox) $11.5 million ($192.6 million) 4

5. Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros) $9.8 million ($180.0 million) 4