Avatar‘s tracking numbers have strongly surged. Total awareness is at 93, definite interest is at 52, first choice is at 28 and first-choice-and-release is at 39. Under-25 females who were counted on 12.10 as definitely not interested at 18 have sunk down to 8, which obviously means that negatives have dropped across the board.
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After lamenting earlier this month that Avatar‘s most recent first-choice tracking seemed to have stalled out at 16, I suggested that a 30 first choice just prior to opening day seemed necessary to match box-office expectations. On December 10th I noted that Avatar’s across-the-board first choice has risen from 16 to 20 — good news. And now it’s nearly at 30, which is roughly the same or a tad higher than the first-choice figure for New Moon just before opening day.
Does this mean that previous expectations that Avatar would open somewhere between the high 60s and low 70s are perhaps moot? A box-office analyst I spoke to a few days ago said “if people are expecting Avatar to open to $100 million, their expectations are wildly unrealistic. It doesn’t need to open to anywhere near that, and Fox isn’t expecting it to.” I’m thinking that a Sunday-night figure in the mid to upper 70s might not be unrealistic.
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