Avatar #1 after 6 weeks!

After six weeks, the James Cameron smash hit Avatar remains at the top, continueing to buck trends and draw theater goers. This week, Avatar brought in a bit over $35 million domestic dollars to move into second, surpassing The Dark Knight, and inching closer to Cameron's other hit, Titanic. Oversees, the movie has amazingly flourished, smashing box office records, and raking in the dough.

Now, we could talk about all those people who thought the $500 million number would never be achieved, and how they feel pretty stupid right about now, but I want to talk about why this movie is behaving like none other at the box office.

With movies at the box office, there is always a clear pattern a movie goes through, no matter what the movie is. The movie generally hits the high the first week, and drops between 40% and 50% in the second week, accompanied by a 25% to 35% drop the second week, with another 30% drop the third week. Every movie from Titanic to The Dark Knight to Casablanca has exhibited this trend with nearly every movie inbetween doing the same, except for Avatar. Avatar dropped 2% from its first week, 10% the second and 15% the third, and continues, after 6 weeks at the top, which is unheard of.

So, I have to wonder why the movie is exhibiting such a strange pattern. Could it be the director pulling people in? Sure, James Cameron has made some great movies with Terminator 2, Titanic, Aliens, all blockbusters, but this much? What about the star power of the movie? Sam Worthington, who seems to be in everything hasn't had a movie nearly this popular, and movie goers just saw Zoe Saldana in Star Trek earlier in the year, but neither actor, even combined has shown this kind of money. What about the demographic? Here is where it gets tough, because Avatar has trailers out for the family audience, which is short on the violence and cat boobs, and long on the wonder of Pandora, and you also have the grittier late teens audience, showing Saldana's Netiri wearing very little, accompanied with crazy amounts of action.

So, why does this movie have a staying power of no other?