Showing Out

After Avatar broke the DVD/Blu-Ray record for first day sales and moved 6.7 million in the first four days in stores, it’s broken the three week record, too. According to Reuters, the James Cameron epic has sold 19.7 million copies in the DVD and Blu-ray format in the past three weeks, more than any other film during that same period. The closest that any other film has come was The Dark Knight in 2008, which sold 16 million copies in the first three weeks. Not only is that an incredible feat, but we’re going to go ahead and do the math here. At Best Buy, the Blu-ray costs $19.99 and the DVD costs $17.99, and if you average the two at $18.99, that equates to $374,103,000 in revenue. Cot damn!

Last week, Avatar broke the record for highest sales of a DVD and Blu-ray release in a day, moving 3.2 million units and edging out The Dark Knight as the record holder. Now, they’ve gone and broken another record. According to a press release, Avatar has sold 6.7 million DVDs and Blu-ray Discs in the United States and Canada its first four days, making it the top-selling home entertainment title of 2010 so far. That puts it ahead of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which sold 6.5 million copies during the same time frame earlier this year. And as of now, the film’s home entertainment release stands at $130 million in sales, with the DVD moving 4 million copies and the Blu-ray selling 2.7 mil. Rappers, get jealous.

There have already been about four trailers for this film, so why not a fifth? After the last trailer bowed online back at the end of March, Paramount has let yet another one loose on the internets, this time conveying even more visual awesomery that can be expected in the film (which, by the way, is going to be in 3-D). Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, The Last Airbender, based on the animated kid’s show Avatar: The Last Airbender (it used to have “Avatar” in the title, but you can guess why they changed it), stars Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone and Dev Patel, focusing on a world where humanity is split into four elements: Fire, Air, Water and Earth. When they begin to spar, Aang (Ringer) discovers he is the lone Avatar with the power to manipulate all four elements and tries to unite humanity before it’s too late. Look for this one when it hits theaters July 2nd.

Face it: Avatar will never go away. Not only did it break about 342 records at the box office, but it just broke yet another record. According to THR, the James Cameron-directed epic sold 1.5 million copies of the 2D DVD and Blu-ray yesterday, which marked the first day that the film had been available for purchase. This breaks The Dark Knight’s first day sales record, putting the film on track to sell upwards of 4 million copies. As of yesterday, retailers sold off 60% of their Blu-ray inventory and 50% of DVDs on average, a ridiculous feat of humanity. “We could not have had the special material we wanted to have but will have it for the special edition,” producer Jon Landau said. Start banking those pennies now.

By now, you’d expect for Avatar to have reached every possible milestone imaginable. But alas, there’s another one that it hadn’t reached - until now. According to THR, the film has passed the $100 million mark at the Imax theaters overseas, having roped in an estimated $1.6 million on each of its 85 screens outside of North America. This, combined with the $128 million made at the North American box office, brings their global tally to $228 million made on Imax alone, a ridiculously impressive feat for a film that’s been in theaters since 2009. And not only that, but you can expect for the film to reach a whole new set of milestones when it hits DVD and Blu-ray. Gonna be iller than the stomach flu.

Three trailers already for a film that won’t be out until July 2nd? Seems like too much overkill, right? Whatever. Above is the third trailer (watch the first two here and here) for M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, based on the animated kid’s show Avatar: The Last Airbender (it used to have “Avatar” in the title, but you can guess why they changed it). The film stars Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, and Dev Patel, focusing on a world where humanity is split into four elements: Fire, Air, Water and Earth. When they begin to spar, Aang (Ringer) discovers he is the lone Avatar with the power to manipulate all four elements and tries to unite humanity before it’s too late. Looks like it might have the potential to transcend its kid-friendly status. Check for this one.

Speaking of James Cameron, here’s some news regarding his most recent box office feat Avatar. According to the L.A. Times, Avatar will hit retail on April 22nd care of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment in both DVD and Blu-ray formats. The release is being described as “unconventional,” forgoing the extra features and settling on just a simple menu function, a decision meant to allow every part of the disc to be used for the best graphical presentation. And on top of that, Avatar will become the first Blu-ray film in history to be released by a major studio without a single promo trailer or item of any kind. The only downside? The release won’t be in 3-D. But by the time April 22nd rolls around, if you haven’t seen the film yet, you’re already a lost cause.

Just when you thought life could get any worse, here comes some news that is bound to crush your soul. Like everything in Hollywood these days, James Cameron is planning on bringing his next film to the big screen in 3-D - only it’s with his 1997 blockbuster Titanic. In an interview with Empire, Cameron plans to bring Titanic back to theaters in 3-D in 2012, discussing how the project is coming along. “We’re going to do Titanic in 3-D!” he says. “We’ve already done a 90 second clip of it and it’s phenomenal and gorgeous, so that’s going to be the project for next year. It’s a conversion of it, not native photography; we can’t go back.” Talk about a shipwreck. Yikes.

Donald Faison, most notably of the movie Clueless and the TV series Scrubs, is headed for the big screen again. According to THR, Faison has joined the cast of the sci-fi thriller Skyline, which also stars Eric Balfour, Scottie Thompson and Brittany Daniel. The film, directed by visual effects artists Greg and Colin Strause (Avatar, 300) from a script by Joshua Cordes and Liam O’Donnell, is set in a Los Angeles apartment building where its inhabitants face a “mysterious attack of otherworldly origins.” Faison is set to play an entrepreneur who coaxes his buddy (Balfour) to the West Coast, only to wake up after a night of debauchery to discover that an odd force is wiping humanity off the planet. Filming is currently underway in L.A., but in the meantime, you can catch Faison in the ninth season (!) of Scrubs currently being shown on ABC.

What’s that? You thought James Cameron’s Avatar had run its course at the box office? You thought wrong. According to a press release, the film just passed the $200 million mark at IMax theaters alone this past weekend, with $4.3 million earned from 179 domestic IMax theaters and accounting for 27% of the three-day weekend’s $16.2 million gross. And internationally, Avatar grossed $3.9 million from 84 international IMax theaters, pushing the international gross past the $200 million mark. “This incredible milestone not only reflects the mass appeal of watching ‘Avatar’ in IMAX, it also reflects the significant expansion of our global audience base,” said IMAX CEO Richard L. Gelfond. “‘Avatar’ was a perfect fit for IMAX and the type of event title IMAX fans and exhibitors embrace. We look forward to growing our audience even more as we continue to expand the IMAX network and offer moviegoers more of Hollywood’s biggest films.” If you haven’t seen this in IMax yet, kick yourself.