Prediction: What Will Avatar's Monday Gross Be?

Today is a crucial day for Avatar box office watchers.  The holidays are over and the reality of a ‘regular’ Monday at the box office is about to set in.  How “regular” will it be?

Well, first some perspective.

• On the first Monday after the New Years Weekend, Titanic dropped 66% from $8M on Sunday, to $3m on Monday.  That’s Titanic.
• Return of the King dropped 68% from $7m to $2m.
• Meet the Fockers dropped 61% from $11m to 4.4M

So where will Avatar land.

In an effort to divine some anecdotal info, I went to Arclight Cinemas website and checked out how advance ticket sales are going for the 7pm and 7:4o pm shows tonight.  I checked at 4:30 PM — so 2-3 hours before the show.  Here is the diagram that came up showing which seats have been sold and which are available:

Here’s 7pm at the Cineramadome

And here’s 7:40pm in a smaller theater

Not bad for a Monday.

So, Avatar’s Sunday was $17,381,129.  That means a 66% drop would be $5m.  A 60% deop would be 6.9M and that would equal the lowest drop among the holiday overachievers surveyed above.

I’m going to say $7m.  My weekend prediction was pretty good — I predicted $68m and it did $68.3.  I’m not so sure about this prediction but … whatever, gotta make one.  We’ll see.