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Hey! I love the Last Airbend...oh, wait.

Kim Hollis: James Cameron's last film was relatively successful at the box office. Perhaps you've heard of it. It involved a boat and a love story. Avatar has been promising immersive storytelling for awhile now. What are your expectations for it in terms of box office and quality?

Josh Spiegel: Depending on how heavily Avatar is marketed on TV and in theaters for the next six weeks, I can imagine the film coming close (close, mind you) to the opening-weekend performance that The Dark Knight had. Now, whether or not that prediction is wildly off-base is one thing; I'd be shocked if Avatar, though, comes anywhere close to Titanic's box-office stats, for a large number of reasons. Yes, both films have a romance; yes, both films have lots of action. However, not a lot of people in the States are as ga-ga over Sam Worthington as they were over Leonardo DiCaprio. In general, if Avatar gets the right amount of marketing and hype, and gets good word-of-mouth, it might end up as one of the 300 million-plus grossers of 2009. But that's a big if.

Max Braden: The two films face a completely different demographic. Titanic was a date movie across the board, and was friendly fare for adults as well as love-angst obsessed teenage girls, while Avatar is going to appeal to a much more narrow male age range. Keeping that in mind I doubt it will be able to open bigger than December's historical leaders: I Am Legend, Lord of the Rings series, Narnia, and King Kong. That would mean an upper range of $65-75 million for the three day weekend. And while Titanic opened moderately and just kept raking in the money, I expect Avatar to behave more like a summer movie. I don't think it will earn much more than $200 million over its run.





Jim Van Nest: I'm with Max on this one. The trailer has me whelmed. Maybe I'm not the target audience here, I'm not sure. I think a lot of the success of this film will depend on how it's marketed. If they run a series of TV spots that focus on different aspects...to open it up to a broader audience, it could do better. But if they play the "from the director of Titanic" card as their main selling point, not so much, in my opinion.

Kim Hollis: While I'm intrigued enough to be there opening day, I do agree that there's an odd quality to the trailer that I think will be perplexing for potential audience members. I'm counting on Cameron to deliver, but it's been an awfully long time since his last movie and I'm not sure if people are going to be saying, "Hey, it's a James Cameron movie!" in the same way they might say, "Hey, it's a Steven Spielberg movie!" I have a real fear that this thing could crash and burn a la King Kong (which admittedly did okay, but not up to expectations).

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