'Avatar' wins its fourth straight weekend with another $48.5 million

"Avatar" is well on its way to toppling "Titantic's" box office records.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

"Avatar" has just accomplished a very rare four-peat on top of the weekend box office with another $48.5 million in the bank.  The James Cameron epic easily outpaced this frame's competition and the only real challenger next week is "Book of Eli" with Denzel Washington which is tracking strongly. 

"Avatar" has a new domestic cume of $429 million and has made an astounding $1.34 billion globally according to studio estimates. The big question is whether it can topple "Titanic's" domestic high mark of $600 million set a decade ago. At this point, it's looking more and more likely.

The second slot went to "Sherlock Holmes" with another $16.6 million.  Currently at $165.2 million, the question on Robert Downey, Jr. latest franchise is when does Warner Bros. announce a sequel?

Third found the happy-go-lucky CG animated "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel" with $16.3 million over the 3-day and a new running total of $178.2 million. And yes, we're betting you can expect a third "Chipmunks" very soon.

"Daybreakers" debuted in fourth with a good, but not great $15 million. Expect this vampire flick to fade fast.

Among other newcomers, the Amy Adams romantic comedy "Leap Year" made it into the sixth slot with $9.2 million.  The critically maligned romantic comedy is no doubt one release Universal Pictures would like to quickly forget about. 

"Youth in Revolt," the weekend's last newcomer, found $7 million off just 1,873 theater for seventh.  The gross was within expectations based on industry tracking, but here's hoping the very funny flick can find an audience before landing on DVD and cable.

Complete weekend results are released on Monday.

Gregory Ellwood
Editor-in-Chief, Co-Founder

• Follow

With over a decade of experience in the movie industry, Ellwood survived working for two major studios and has written for Variety, MSN and the LA Times. A co-founder of HitFix, Ellwood spends his time relaxing hitting 3’s on the basketball court and following his beloved Clippers.