It’s one thing to break a box office record. It’s another to break your own. For over a decade, Titanic sat untouchable at the top of the all-time highest-grossing films, a feat made even more dramatic by its genre. A period romance on a doomed ship was not supposed to rake in over $2 billion. Yet there it was.That is, until James Cameron returned with glowing blue aliens and a camera full of ambition.In 2009, Avatar arrived quietly and then refused to leave. No major franchise, no pop-culture buildup, just a fantasy world no one had ever seen, rendered in 3D so crisp it made people lean out of their seats.And before anyone could process how weirdly beautiful it all was, it had dethroned Titanic, breaking the very record Cameron once set over a decade prior and doing it with a film that seemed, on paper, like a high-stakes gamble.This is the story of how Avatar out-Titanic’d Titanic, one careful move at a time.Titanic’s Untouchable Legacy When Titanic hit theaters in late 1997, the buzz wasn’t about its box office potential. It was about whether it would flop. It had gone over budget, over schedule, and into “Hollywood disaster” territory before the first ticket was sold. Instead, it became the world's biggest film.By the end of its theatrical run, Titanic had earned over $2.2 billion globally, an astonishing figure in the pre-3D, pre-China-boom era. What’s more interesting than the number is how it got there. This wasn’t a front-loaded blockbuster....
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Yesterday