Avatar Still Holds the Box Office Crown

15 years ago, on December 10, 2009, James Cameron’s "Avatar" premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. At the time, the movie was widely lauded for its groundbreaking visual effects, delivering a 3D experience that blew audiences away and ushered in a wave of 3D movies. 

Studios happily road the 3D hype train in the wake of Avatar's success, as it enabled them to add a hefty surcharge to ticket prices, improving their margins, especially on movies that were converted to 3D in post-production at relatively low cost. That was not the case for "Avatar", however, which was designed for and shot in 3D, bringing its production cost somewhere in the range of $250 to $350 million according to industry estimates. That investment paid off handsomely, though, as "Avatar" is still the highest-grossing movie of all time.

Cameron's eco science fiction epic surrounding the the blue Na'vi tribe native to the fictional planet Pandora raked in an estimated $2.92 billion at the box office worldwide, putting it ahead of "Avengers: Endgame" at $2.8 billion, according to Box Office Mojo. Ranked third is Avatar's 2022 sequel "Avatar: The Way of Water", which brought audiences back to Pandora for a global box office gross of $2.32 billion, making it the most successful movie in the post-Covid era. In fourth position is another James Cameron movie, his 1997 classic "Titanic", which made an eye-watering $2.26 billion at the time, making it the only movie in the top 10 released before 2009.

It should be noted that the ranking shown in the chart below is not adjusted for inflation and thus heavily favors recent releases over past blockbusters. While "Avatar" and "Titanic" are the only films released before 2010 to feature in the top 10 of the unadjusted ranking, the adjusted ranking (only available for the North American box office unfortunately) features classics such as "Gone with the Wind", the original "Star Wars" and "The Sound of Music".