AVATAR Enters NZ All-Time Top 5 Box Office

MEDIA RELEASE 21 January 2010

AVATAR Enters NZ All-Time Top 5 Box Office

New Zealand box office for James Cameron’s Golden Globe-winning motion picture epic AVATAR has now hit $10.9 million ($NZ) after just 5 weeks in cinemas.

MPDA figures show that AVATAR is the fastest film to achieve $10 million in New Zealand, reaching that point 31 days after release. The next fastest, Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, took 33 days.

AVATAR has just overhauled Shrek 2 ($10.846 million) to take No 5 position in the All-Time NZ box office.

NZ All-time Box office Top 5
1) Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring $14.54 million

2) Lord of the Rings Return of the King $13.59 million

3) Titanic $12.91 million

4) Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers $12.08 million

5) AVATAR $10.9 million

Distributor 20th Century Fox New Zealand managing director Mark Croft says, “Current performance will see it move into 4th position sometime in the next two weeks and we expect it will also overtake James Cameron’s Titanic at number 3.”

In the five weeks since AVATAR’s December 17 opening, more than 990,000 admissions have been recorded in New Zealand, of which 560,000 have been in 3D cinemas. There are currently only 19 3D cinemas in the country.

In addition, AVATAR now holds the box office record for a film screened in the IMAX format, moving ahead of previous record holder The Dark Knight.

It has just been announced that New Zealander Mark Sagar of Weta Digital won an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences science award for his work on a light stage capture device and image-based facial rendering system used in the making of AVATAR.

AVATAR won Golden Globe awards for best picture and best director in Los Angeles this week.

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