Readaloo

Remember "Paranormal Activity"? The fake-u-mentary horror flick filmed for no budget and no-name actors that scared the living daylights out of anyone who watched it?

Well, now there's a sequel coming out. The trailer for "Paranormal Activity 2" is playing before the 'tween favorite, "The Twilight Saga: Eclipse."

At least, it was until some Cinemark theaters in Texas pulled it due to complaints that it was creeping out the kids who came to watch a vampire-werewolf love triangle - but left with nightmares.

The fear factor doesn't seem to be holding anyone back on the Web. Searches for the movie on Yahoo! are scary high: Lookups on "paranormal activity 2 trailer" levitated almost 900% in just one day, and searches for "paranormal activity 2" shot up over 1,500%.

The trailer is admittedly creepy. It's got that black-and white security-cam view while everyone is sleeping - or supposed to be asleep - just like first movie. There's a barking dog, a baby, and the sound of footsteps...OK, maybe it's a little scary.

Of course, a fright fest is the point of a horror movie - and like they say, there is no such thing as bad publicity, right? In fact, some blogs have suggested that a movie trailer too terrifying for theaters is probably the best kind of marketing you can hope for. Truly petrifying? Or planned promotion? Watch the trailer and decide for yourself.

I'm told this will be the biggest financial haul ever for a movie director from a single pic because James Cameron had a significant gross percentage of the Twentieth Century Fox megahit as helmer, writer, and producer. Though Hollywood pay experts tell me that the $350M all-in figure is largely attributable to his directing deal structured as "first dollar" gross or more likely "at cash break" gross. It's certainly bigger than either he or the studio -- or anyone -- thought he'd make from Avatar which, after its December 2009 release date, has grossed a best-ever $2.7 billion worldwide at the box office. "But Cameron is making $350 million because the DVD did beyond expectation," an insider tells me. Indeed, its 2D DVD and Blu-Ray worldwide sales smashed records in all categories. And still to come is the release of its 3D DVD in November. Meanwhile, yesterday, Twentieth Century Fox and Cameron announced that a "Special Edition" Avatar will be released in theaters August 27th as a limited engagement and exclusively in Digital 3D and IMAX 3D. This version will include more than 8 minutes of new footage. "With Cameron making $350 million, can you imagine what Fox and Dune Entertainment and Ingenious Media are making?" one of my insiders wondered, referring to the three companies that together bankrolled Avatar. And let's not forget there'll be an Avatar sequel... and maybe a threequel as part of what Cameron has been calling a "trilogy-scaled arc of story". And the production costs on the subsequent films should be far less because they've honed the 3D filmmaking technology process.

Forbes magazine about a week ago placed Cameron only #2 on its Celebrity 100 money ranking this year of the richest and most powerful actors, actresses, musicians and other well known showbiz figures. In fact, based on my insiders, Cameron should have been #1 because his $350M far exceeds the $315M which the magazine said top-ranked Oprah Winfrey earned. Forbes underestimated the director's pay at only $210M.

My sources tell me that Cameron's $350M take from Avatar also eclipses his reported $97M haul from the previous #1 biggest movie worldwide, Titanic. But that figure will go higher, too. Earlier this year, Cameron revealed that Titanic will be re-released in 3D in April 2012, in order to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the actual ship. In total, Cameron's directorial efforts have grossed approximately $5.75 billion worldwide.

It's now the stuff of Hollywood legend that Cameron wrote the script for Avatar back in the mid-1990s when he and Stan Winston co-founded Digital Domain. He took the screenplay to their special effects lab only to be told it was just not possible to make the film with the current technology. So he sat on the project for more than a decade. To make Avatar, Cameron created the Fusion Camera System technology for photo-realistic computer-generated characters through motion capture animation. So the director has an ever brighter financial future because he now can sell that technology to 3D filmmakers all over the world. And he'll get top dollar for it, to be sure.

Man of the moment Keanu Reeves has shown his generosity by giving away $50 million of his earnings from the Matrix sequels. The 38-year-old decided to hand over the money to the unsung heroes of the sci-fi blockbusters - the costume and special effects teams.

Keanu is expected to make a total of $70 million from the films, thanks to a deal which guarantees him a 15 per cent profit-share, so he will still net around $20 million. Asked about his prodigious act of generosity, the actor said he already had enough cash. "Money is the last thing I think about. I could live on what I have already made for the next few centuries," he declared.

And it's not the first time the Beirut-born star has shown his jaw-dropping benevolence. While shooting the films in Australia he amazed the team of stuntmen by giving them each a $6,000 Harley Davidson motorcycle. And the actor, whose sister has leukaemia, has also channelled millions into cancer research.

His gift to the Matrix series' 29 behind-the-scenes whiz-kids will see each of them receiving $1.75 million.

Via:USAToday

Hollywood usually embraces all that's trendy and hip. But moguls don't mind seeming like fuddy-duddies as they mobilize their heavy PR artillery against a new business proposal: futures trading based on a movie's box office performance.

A movie camera from the 1930s.

Tinseltown got a jolt on Friday when the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission authorized a company called Media Derivatives to create an exchange for movie futures.  It would sell contracts that anticipate how much revenue a flick will generate from domestic ticket sales. Buyers would make or lose money based on the actual results.

Trade groups led by the Motion Picture Association of America say that's a form of gambling that invites chicanery. For example, a movie exhibitor could bet against a movie and then effectively throw the game by cutting its ad spending. Or someone could try to manipulate the market by spreading rumors that, say, the star of a big film is in rehab.

What's more, the pay offs for the contracts are based on nothing more than unofficial studio estimates about box office sales.  There's no law to prevent  a studio from estimating too high, or low.

"After the fiscal meltdown from which our country is still struggling to emerge, we have seen the danger of abusive financial practices," the MPAA and groups representing directors and theater owners said in a statement.  "Now is the time to strengthen and stabilize our financial system, not the time to open the floodgates on an untested, and unwanted plan that could cause serious harm to an important American industry and its workers."

But Media Derivatives says that the market for movie futures shouldn't have any more problems than similar markets do for commodities such as grains. It also could benefit companies that want to invest in movies without betting the farm. 

"Historically, initial product skeptics have eventually become the greatest adopters,"  Media Derivatives CEO Robert Swagger said in a statement. He adds that "The regulatory review and oversight of the CFTC is rigorous -- and necessary to inform and protect all participants in these markets."

Trades can't take place just yet. The CFTC says that "given the novel  nature of the contracts," it wants to examine some of them before allowing Media Derivatives to ring the opening bell -- or whatever it'll do.

Media Derivatives says that the new market, to be called The Trend Exchange, should be up and running by October.

Another company, Cantor Futures, is preparing to create a similar market for contracts that try to anticipate how successful a movie will be in theaters.

You don't need the last name Murdoch, Spielberg or Warner to be a movie investor. The question, though, is whether you want to be one.

Most investors are comfortable with stocks and bonds in their portfolios, with perhaps a dose of options or commodities for the more adventurous. But now, thanks in part to disillusionment with traditional investments, some investors are itching for a piece of the red carpet and a helping of Hollywood glitz.

Even though stock and credit markets have roared back from what seemed like a near-death experience, the crash inflicted emotional scars and losses, leading some investors to wonder if there might be other places to put their money that might be more fulfilling.

Big box-office hits such as Avatar, coupled with the introduction of new ways to bet on or invest in movies, is making the idea of financing the big screen more appealing to some mainstream investors who wouldn't have considered it before.

"It's a lot more fun" than other investments, says John Case, 61, who invested nearly $50,000 making a movie called Raul about a 75-year-old man who competed in an international athletic competition. "You can make money," he says, though that hasn't happened for him yet.

New ways for regular investors to bet on movies are evolving. A market that lets individuals speculate on movies' success is scheduled to launch next week, pending regulatory approval.

Additionally, small movie makers are discovering new ways to connect with investors and sell and promote their films online, giving them more of a chance of actually making some money from what is a highly speculative investment.

But before you go shopping for a director's chair and house in the Hollywood Hills, know that industry insiders say movies in general have historically been lousy investments.

Investors have long had ways to invest in movies, but their hit-it-big-or-miss-by-a-mile nature means that, by definition, most films lose money. Even studios with successful films or known brand names have failed or are struggling.

And some of the "Hollywood accounting" used to record the costs of producing films has left investors outside the industry's in-crowd holding the losses but sharing little of the upside from films. " 'Perilous' might be understating what's suicidal risk" of investing in movies, says Edward Jay Epstein, author of books about financing entertainment, including The Big Picture.

While tens of thousands of movies are made each year, only about 650 get any form of distribution to theaters or other places in the U.S. where money could be made, Epstein says. And of those, no more than 100 make money, he says. Those aren't great odds.

Still, if the glitz of Hollywood proves too alluring to resist, there are several key ways to do it.

Betting on the future

If regulators sign off, starting Tuesday, movie box office receipts will have something in common with hog bellies and corn: Investors can bet on them using financial tools called futures.

The futures market allows investors to bet on what prices of items, usually a commodity such as steel or wheat, will be at a set date in the future.

Futures began as a way for farmers to lock in prices for crops but have expanded to other commodities and for use by speculators.

A new futures market would let people bet, with a minimum of $50, against other participants on whether certain movies will do better or worse than expected.

The futures exchange is to be operated by Cantor Futures Exchange and use box office data from Rentrak Theatrical and Nielsen EDI. The exchange plans to open Tuesday and conduct the first trades on April 22.

The exchange's appeal is that people would be able to bet on information that's readily understandable and followed by the masses, namely, box office receipts.

However, this futures market is more akin to speculating than investing. The money you put up doesn't help pay for movies.

Instead, the futures market is a way to bet with other bettors, just as in an office NCAA-basketball pool.

The exchange, though, requires the approval of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The CFTC has delayed the approval of a similar movie futures market designed for professional investors, called The Trend Exchange, operated by a company called Veriana, as it reviews the idea. The commission is expected to make a decision by today. The Motion Picture Association of America has expressed objections to such trading.

Playing the studios

The parent companies of major film studios are publicly traded, including Sony, Time Warner, Disney and NewsCorp.

These four studios dominate the industry, generating roughly 95% of the revenue, Epstein says. They have the clout to get past the top hurdle that films face to make money: distribution.

Distribution is the industry term for the process of getting a movie physically in front of viewers willing to pay to see it.

And the distribution that really matters isn't just the movie theaters, which account for only about 20% of the money movies make, Epstein says. Where movies haul in the dough is from deals with pay-TV channels such as HBO and Starz. Few other studios outside the big four are able to muscle into this critical pathway, he says.

Investing in these four movie studios' stocks, though, isn't many investors' idea of movie financing. These companies are media giants with interests in everything from electronics to books and newspapers. Their movie units are small portions of their total revenue.

That's why some investors prefer taking a look at the handful of smaller studios that are publicly traded. But here, the risks are even greater. Many smaller studios list on lightly regulated marketplaces, which are rife with speculation.

Even studios that trade on major U.S. exchanges have been mixed investments. Shares of Lionsgate are down more than 30% in the past five years, trailing the roughly 5% gain by the Standard & Poor's 500, while DreamWorks Animation is roughly dead-even with the S&P.

"The investment history of the movie studios has been very mixed, at best," says Matt Harrigan, analyst at investment research firm Wunderlich. "It's a very difficult business."

Investing directly

Someone who knows of a movie director with a good idea or who has film skills themselves can bankroll a movie directly.

Consider One Too Many Mornings, a comedy about several young adults growing up. During the early stages of filming, several of the people working on the project approached the uncle of a team member, to finance the project, says Anthony Deptula, one of the film's producers. The uncle, Robert Young, became the executive producer.

The movie, which played at the Sundance film festival, cost just $50,000 to make, and the producers are working in their spare time to sign up screenings at theaters and sell the DVD and downloads online. They've earned back about a third of the $50,000, Deptula says. "We're confident we'll make our investors' money back," he says.

Direct investment such as this might make sense for parents and relatives, who, instead of paying for film school, might help finance their child's film. If the film is good, and gets notice, that might lead to a job in the industry, Epstein says.

Another approach is to team up with a company such as IndieVest, which allows investors to put money into movie projects already in the works. IndieVest's big advantage is that is has connections with theaters to make sure the movies it makes are seen, says CEO Wade Bradley. The company also produces quarterly financial reports so you know where your money is going. The minimum investment is $50,000, and you must be an accredited investor, meaning have a net worth of at least $1 million to participate.

IndieVest's first movie, St. John of Las Vegas, cost $3.8 million to make and has generated about $100,000 from the box office so far. That's why Bradley says you must spread your risk by investing in several films. "You can't look at a movie and say, 'This one will be a winner,' " he says. "You just don't know."

Tagging along

A number of studios raise money from third-party investment vehicles that lend money to studios that want to spread their own financial risk from movie projects.

But these investment groups have had mixed success and aren't really open to the public. Epstein says studios are more likely to share financial risk with movies they're less confident on. And these deals can be very complicated, requiring investors to consult legal help to make sure they're getting what they think they're getting, Epstein says.

Not knowing the details of what you're investing in is dangerous with any kind of investment. But it's potentially disastrous with movies, since the type of investment can range broadly, and many deals are specific to a certain project. Last month, New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton, for instance, sued a former Saints player over $144,000 lost in a movie-studio-related investment.

That's not to say there's no money to be made in movies. There are intangible benefits, including knowing you're part of creating art. Unlike losing money in stocks, a movie leaves you with a product "that doesn't just disappear," Deptula says.

Still, individuals should remember movie investing is almost always best left to the professionals, says Robert Swagger, CEO of Veriana who previously was a financial planner. "The core of (individuals') portfolios should be good stocks, bonds and mutual funds," he says. "I wouldn't put widows and orphans in this."

A spaceship lands. Humans become avatars. A man in a cape can fly. Special effects have made movies magical for decades. Big-dollar or ultralow-budget, the goal is the same: to frighten, fool or thrill the audience.

For a huge movie like Avatar, various special effects companies spent years on the project. One of them, Legacy Effects, had about 120 people working on the look of the inhabitants of the alien moon, Pandora.

But special effects happen on a smaller scale as well. In a cramped trailer in Van Nuys, Calif., two guys mix up fake blood for a slasher scene in C.L.A.S.S. (that stands for Criminal Law and Student Slayings). It's so low budget — $1 million — the filmmakers are shooting in producer Sheldon Robins' aunt's house for the film's final scene.

Robins put much of the little money he had toward special effects makeup. "The most important part was making sure my kills didn't look cheesy," he says.

Jerry Constantine will commit the makeup murders. Constantine did special effects makeup work on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Watchmen and Van Helsing. Usually, for bloody scenes, Constantine attaches plastic tubing to the actor's back, and with a syringe, fires fake blood through the tubing during the live scene. But not on this budget.

"They don't have time for the two-hour makeup for me to pull the actor, glue the appliance on, and then spurt the blood," Constantine explains. "So we fake it out."

Viewers will see the actor after the throat's been slit. (Sorry, but it's all make-believe, remember.) First, Constantine takes a superthin, neck-sized piece of latex foam and cuts a horizontal slit in the middle. Constantine's assistant is Mike Measimer — they've been working on films together for 11 years. Constantine holds the piece up to the actress' neck and proclaims that it will work perfectly, so they glue it on. The two men work in tandem, like surgeons in reverse (wearing black surgical gloves.)

Constantine powders the line where the foam meets skin. With a sponge dipped in makeup, he dabs various pinks onto the fake flesh, then sprays on some pale brown freckles. It looks just like the woman's natural neck, but with a big empty slit in the middle. And now, the slashing begins. Before it gets too gory, we're going to cut away (as it were) to some of the special effects folks who worked on Avatar.

The Big Leagues

Legacy Effects, the special effects company for Avatar, is the offspring of the Stan Winston Studio. Winston worked with Avatar director James Cameron on his Terminator films, creating the menacing bots from the future. (Winston also did Aliens and the groundbreaking dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.) Winston's studio started working with Cameron on Avatar in 2006, but Winston died of cancer in 2008.

John Rosengrant, Winston's protege of 25 years, and a few others at the studio started Legacy Effects, a name in honor of their friend and mentor. They carried on the work in Avatar, creating the specialty props such as the enormous Armored Mobile Platform (AMP) suit, which looks like a tank on legs. The AMP is on display in Legacy Effects' warehouse, where all their movie, TV and commercial props and makeup effects are made. The AMP stands 13.5 feet high, and it's made of 200 distinct pieces — hand-detailed to suggest a metal texture.

"It's like Apache helicopter meets power loader from Alien," says Rosengrant, who worked on all three Terminator movies. Standing nearby the AMP suit in the warehouse is a rogues' gallery of specialty props: the Avatar Scorpion cockpit; the T-600 robot and two-gun turret tank from Termination Salvation; and the Iron Monger from Iron Man.

Rosengrant and his team also created the prosthetic legs actor Sam Worthington wore in Avatar. They found a Sam-sized young man — whose paralysis didn't stop him from playing basketball — and made a cast of his legs.

"We finished them off in silicon and punched individual hairs into them. [The prosthetic legs] would get strapped onto Sam, and his legs would go down into holes in the wheelchair," explains Rosengrant. "I think it was important to make sure that this was convincing, because it really sells the idea of Jake in his freedom as an avatar versus how he was trapped on Earth."

Rosengrant's team also conceived the look of Pandora's Na'avi people — with their enormous eyes. The team selected snow leopard eyes as inspiration and played with the color, turning them more golden and less green.

"You always draw from nature," says Rosengrant, "because you're trying to make the unbelievable believable."

Now, Back To Slashing

Making the unbelievable believable is a tall order on a small budget, but special effects makeup artists Jerry Constantine and Mike Measimer are still working on wreaking murderous mayhem on an actress' neck in C.L.A.S.S. So far, they've made the prosthetic to look completely natural with the actress' skin.

Constantine adds cotton to the horizontal slit area. He's creating what he delicately calls the "meat." The cotton will give dimension to the wound area after red coloring is applied to look like blood. Then, with a tiny spatula, Constantine spreads what looks like raspberry jelly on top. And ick — it suddenly looks like thickened blood.

"This where it starts to look like what it is," says Constantine. And it does. It looks so real, you want to turn away.

With all the advanced special effects on movies these days, it's hard to believe that Constantine and Measimer are still doing it the old-fashioned way. But even at a big studio like Legacy Effects, "slashing" is alive and well. Alan Scott, one of the co-owners of Legacy and a Stan Winston protege, stands by the old methods.

"The technologies that have been used in special makeup effects that worked for nearly 100 years still work," Scott says.

He says digital blood is not as messy, but you don't have actors reacting to something visually horrible, either.

"If you just have a tennis ball that you're playing to, it's hard to understand that there's a 30-foot creature trying to eat you," Scott says.

Scott and Rosengrant were inspired by all the old, great classic horror films — Frankenstein, The Mummy — and actors like Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney. In fact, Scott says, he'd love to do a full-on zombie movie.

"That's part of our roots," he says. "We love horror. My wife doesn't understand it, but that's my whole Netflix library

James Cameron worked with a Cirque du Soleil choreographer to make his Na'vi characters appear graceful on screen.

James Cameron was working as a truck driver in 1977 when he quit his job and, in his words, "started making little films."

Those "little films" got the attention of someone working for Roger Corman, the producer and director known as the "King of the Bs" — as in B-movies. Corman, who has over 100 low-budget films to his credit, including Little Shop of Horrors, Attack of the Giant Leeches and Last Woman on Earth, taught Cameron the basics of creating special effects with almost no money — lessons that Cameron then applied to his blockbusters Titanic and Avatar.

 

The official budget of Avatar was $237 million, with an additional $150 million built in for promotional activities.

"What you learn in those early films is that your will is the only thing that makes the difference in getting the job done," Cameron tells Terry Gross. "It teaches you to improvise and to never lose hope — because you're making a movie, and the movie can be what you want it to be ... it's not in control of you, you're in control of it," he says.

"Even though visual effects are not what we use now — there's no film, or glass painting," Cameron says, "the basics of storytelling don't change."

Avatar, Cameron's latest box office hit, was conceived in the mid-'90s, years before the high-tech special effects and cameras Cameron used to create his virtual world existed.

"Avatar comes from a childhood sense of wonder about nature and reading sci-fi and imagining other worlds," says Cameron. "I grew up in a little town in Canada and spent all of my time in the woods, hunting snakes and frogs and doing drawings of protozoa."

The film, the first in history to gross more than $2 billion worldwide, takes place on the fictional moon Pandora. The people of Pandora — a fictional tribe called the Na'vi — inhabit a lush, pristine rain forest untouched by industrialization. When humans discover that the Na'vi live above a very valuable, very rare natural resource — they travel to the moon to mine the mineral, and the film's main character, a paraplegic marine named Jake Sully, manipulates a genetically engineered human/Na'vi hybrid as a way of learning more about the indigenous culture.

The film combines different genres — the Western, the sci-fi film, the war flick — all of which, Cameron says, were consciously chosen.

"The Iraq stuff and the Vietnam stuff is there by design — and references to the colonial period are there by design," says Cameron. "At a very generalized level, it's saying our attitude about indigenous people and our entitlement about what is rightfully theirs is the same sense of entitlement that lets us bulldoze a forest and not blink an eye. It's just human nature that if we can take it, we will. And sometimes we do it in a very naked and imperialistic way, and other times we do it in a very sophisticated way with lots of rationalization — but it's basically the same thing. A sense of entitlement. And we can't just go on in this unsustainable way, just taking what we want and not giving back."

Cameron says that Avatar is also a comment on "the huge gap or shortfall between what you can imagine and what you can actually do."

"We go from this state as children where we don't know what we can't do. You fly in your dreams as a child, but you tend not to fly in your dreams as an adult," he says. "In the Avatar state, [Jake] is getting to return to that childlike dream state of doing amazing things ... In a funny way, it's actually kind of a comment on the way we find expression for our imagination."

It was only a matter of time - 47 days, to be precise.

According to the box office tally site Boxofficemojo.com, "Avatar" is now the highest-grossing movie of all time domestically. The James Cameron film's business now stands at $601.1 million, ahead of the $600.8 million Cameron's "Titanic" did back in 1997-98.

Moreover, "Titanic" took 252 days to top out; "Avatar," which has been the biggest movie in the country since its mid-December release, is still No. 1 and shows little sign of flagging (and those nine Oscar nominations won't hurt).

 The film is already the global box office leader, having topped "Titanic's" $1.8 billion-plus last week.

Yes, there's been a lot of teeth-grinding over what this means. Yes, tickets for "Avatar" cost more than "Titanic," or "Star Wars," or "Gone With the Wind." Yes, the film is still down the list if you adjust for inflation. But credit where credit is due: "Avatar" was a monumental gamble - its budget is the kind of thing that can cripple studios - and it's paid off, both critically and commercially. James Cameron has got the golden touch.

Below is a list of the Top 20 Grossing Domestic Films Of All Time

James Cameron is king of the box office again, but will his latest eclipse his Titanic success?

It's been in theaters for five weekends and director James Cameron's Avatar is still going like gangbusters. Its billion-dollar (and counting) worldwide gross makes it a shoo-in as the all-time second-highest-grossing film, but can it topple the current No. 1, Cameron's Titanic? Forecasting is a tricky business, and, as with that last Cameron film, analysts are wary of guessing at Avatar's future. It won't eclipse Titanic in raw ticket numbers, but there's a good chance that if Avatar can sustain its holiday-season momentum, it could be well on its way to the biggest-ever worldwide gross (unadjusted for inflation). Here are six factors that could help push the otherworldly epic into the top spot:

1. The hard part is done. It took The Dark Knight seven months to gross $1 billion worldwide. It took Titanic nearly three months. Avatar has pocketed the same amount in a cool 17 days. The market pressure to release a film on DVD means movies aren't in theaters for seven to eight months anymore, as Titanic was. In Avatar's case, it doesn't need that much time: the heavy lifting is done, and after a scorching three-week kickoff, there's just (just!) over $800 million to go to beat Titanic's record.

2. It's competing against itself. January is historically the dumping ground for the year's weakest films, and this year looks to be no different: where December had strong commercial fare like Alvin and the Chipmunks: the Squeakquel and Sherlock Holmes, January will average only three wide releases per weekend and boasts only one ballyhooed release (The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington). Titanic capitalized on the same January doldrums by roaring past the 1997 holidays to earn most of its cash in 1998. Then again, if you're operating on as much momentum as Avatar is, "competition can be overrated," says Brandon Gray, president and publisher of BoxOfficeMojo.com. The film has established itself as a must-see, and "at this point, people who are going to see Avatar are going to see Avatar and would even if the slate was strong," Gray argues. The biggest threat to Avatar's lead could be when it has to cede 3-D screens to the next 3-D blockbuster, March's Alice in Wonderland.

3. Marketing the "novelty factor" has succeeded. The water-cooler wisdom you've probably heard about Avatar hits at the core of its marketing success: If you want to see this movie, you must see it in a theater. Fox positioned the film as a cinematic event, enticing audiences typically turned off by fantasy or science-fiction films by emphasizing the spectacle and majesty of it all. Call it Netflix proofing: "It's really hard to sell the idea that you can have the same experience at home," says David Mumpower, an analyst at BoxOfficeProphets.com. "Avatar faced expectations as unreasonable as there are, and it met them. That made it a near-impossible triumph that people suddenly wanted to see."

4. The Oscars bring the heat. The buzz around a film historically heats up through the Academy Award countdown, and Avatar is a near lock to be nominated. Last year, three of the five best-picture nominees saw their domestic per-theater gross increase the weekend after they were nominated, and Slumdog Millionaire saw its domestic per-theater take jump on the weekend after it won the Oscar. For Avatar, nods from the Academy could lure in skeptical holdouts and repeat viewers.

5. There's a whole world out there. Two-thirds of Titanic's haul was earned overseas, and Avatar is tracking similarly (compare that with, say, The Dark Knight, which saw a near-even split between North American tallies and what it earned around the rest of the globe). Avatar opened in 106 markets globally and was No. 1 in all of them. Markets such as Russia, where Titanic saw modest receipts in 1997 and 1998, are white-hot today, analysts say, with more screens and moviegoers than ever before. Avatar stands poised to reap the benefits, and it has already dotted the globe with box-office records.

6. Premium ticket prices. Movies in 3-D took in $1.3 billion in 2009, according to Variety, a threefold increase over 2008 and more than 10 percent of the total 2009 box-office gross. The increased ticket price—an average of $2 to $3 per ticket in most markets—will undoubtedly help pad Avatar's coffers.

None of the above explanations, however, will diminish Avatar's accomplishment as a (potential) top grosser. "What makes Avatar remarkable is that it has no basis in previously established material," Gray says. The movie might be derivative of many movies in its story and themes, but it had no direct antecedent like the other top-grossing films: Titanic (historical events), the Star Wars movies (an established film franchise), or The Lord of the Rings (literature). It was a tougher sell, which makes its achievement more impressive.

Now that Avatar is on course to become the second-highest-grossing film in history, James Cameron has his absolute pick of projects. What's next?

A month ago, it appeared to be a remake of the 1966 schlock classic Fantastic Voyage.

Cameron told reporters at the British premier of Avatar that he plans to do the film using the same 3-D technology that made Avatar such a visual feast. For those who loved Avatar's visuals but groaned through its tinny dialogue and tone-deaf, noble-savage plotline, things probably won't get much better this time around. The Fantastic Voyage script is being done by Shane Salerno, the man behind Fitzgeraldian classics of wordsmithing such as Alien vs. Predator and Armageddon.

It now appears that Cameron will take a shepherd's role on Fantastic Voyage – helping craft

the story and oversee production – but that he won't direct it himself.

When Cameron talked up Fantastic Voyage, many still thought Avatar would struggle to break even, given its colossal ($300 million? $400 million?) budget. Seventeen days into its run, the movie long ago recouped its production costs.

That would seem to make a sequel pretty inevitable.

Cameron told MTV.com that he has two follows to Avatar in mind.

"I have a trilogy-scaled arc of story right now, but I haven't put any serious work into writing a script," he said two weeks ago. Both would follow Avatar's lead characters, Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and pick up where Avatar left off, on the planet Pandora in the year 2154.

Avatar took more than a decade to make. Cameron has said that since the technology he created to shoot the movie is now in place and well practised, sequels will not take nearly as long. That's the good news. The bad news: He's still writing the script himself.

There are two other prime possibilities.

Cameron has tapped the Japanese manga Battle Angel Alita – a sort of La Femme Nikita meets Blade Runner – about a bounty-hunting cyborg. At one point, Cameron intended Battle Angel to be his next feature. When he hit a wall on the story, he turned instead to a script he'd written in the mid-'90s – Avatar.

Cameron now has a Battle Angel script and "a lot" of production design, though he characterized the preparations as "not too far down the line."

Also, there's another reboot of a sci-fi classic: Forbidden Planet. This one has been written by J. Michael Straczynski, creator of the best space opera you've never watched, Babylon 5.

Cameron has called the original Forbidden Planet, starring Robby the Robot, "my favourite science-fiction film of all time." (Cue whimper from George Lucas).

He has also said in Avatar junkets that he's "actively involved" in Straczynski's remake, but "I haven't made any decisions about it yet."

Which sounds like Hollywood-ese for, "How much will you give me?"