Cameron’s Avatar Has Itself a Merry BIG X-Mas!

This was a banner Christmas weekend, ending a year where the box office was generally up from last year with not only the biggest Christmas weekend ever, but a historic record-setting weekend with the Top 4 grossing more than $200 million on their own, and the Top 10 grossing $260 million up nearly $100 million (!) from Christmas weekend last year. Leading the way was James Cameron's unstoppable sci-fi epic Avatar (20th Century Fox), which once again took first place with an estimated $75 million over the three days to set a new Christmas weekend record. Guy Ritchie's take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (Warner Bros.) starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law took second place with a more than respectable $65.4 million in its first three days, averaging $18,000 in 3,626 theaters. After grossing roughly $27 million on Wednesday and Thursday, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (20th Century Fox), the sequel to Alvin and the Chipmunks (for those who couldn't decypher the cryptic title), brought in $50.2 million over the weekend.