How is Avatar not a proven product?

When Toyota releases a new car, do people buy it?

You are contradicting yourself here because you used EPIC FAIL this year for WATCHMEN. Since "epic" means "extraordinary" (see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epic) the use of the word twice in a year makes it "ordinary" the second time...

Cameron already learned what fails, and what succeeds with The Abyss.

lol, you know how it feels to have your ego crushed, don't you?

No

10 reasons it will not make 500 Million.

Not a proven product - It's not based on anything, besides a highly derivative story that has found it already being made fun of in popular culture.

Cameron's name doesn't mean anything anymore. It has been a decade since his last movie. His projects since then have been small scale documentaries and a disappointment of a television show. The last time he touched a sci-fi movie was in 1991, and Terminator isn't a franchise you really want to attach your name with any more.

George Lucas syndrome - Everything from Cameron's obsession with tech to the obsessiveness of crafting his world brings to mind another director who took decades off until the tech caught up with his vision.

500 Million is not easy - Only two movies have ever hit 500 million dollars. One was Titanic on the same release date with little to no competition until April, and it remained in theatres until September of the following year. The other was a hugely anticipated sequel with a hot teen star who had died recently, along with being the finest crafted comic book movie ever produced.

Titanic had women - Titanic was a movie that hit all aspects of the audience, but it was women that obsessively saw it 10-15 times, every weekend for months. Do you really see that audience doing this for a romance between CGI creatures?

Christmas unknown sci-fi - Science Fiction has not ever done well in the holiday season. There is no fan base of any significant count unlike Lord of the Rings, and even that first installment struggled to top 300 million.

No stars, few humans - Sam Worthington is not a box office draw, Sigourney Weaver hasn't been a draw since Aliens, and both of them spend most of the movie as glorified voice actors anyway.

Questionable storyline - Anti-human Dances with Wolves with a dash of save the planet isn't exactly a great holiday tale.

Competition - Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. is one week later which will attract women and action fans. Alvin 2 will attract children and young teens. Oscar bait movies will be going wide about this time. Into the new year, there is a Denzel Washington post-apocalyptic epic, a vampire movie, and a movie about killer angels.

Being sold as "The greatest adventure film ever!" - Overhyping will kill a movie's WOM like nothing else. Showing commercials where you are literally saying that your movie is the greatest EVER is inviting a lot of "Not as good as they said." Fox is throwing everything and anything at the wall to try to sell it, but they waited too long to start the fire and now have turned it up full blast too late.

I firmly believe this will be the King Kong of 2009. No major stars except CGI and a story that has been done a thousand times before, along with an overlong run time. I do think it will be a good movie and I think it will do okay, but KK numbers are where it will end up, and we will not be seeing Avatar 2. 58/230 and 600 mill worldwide.

Star Trek still wins :p

Ugh I still don't see this coming close to 500 Million. The Marketing Compaign still isn't great and every time friends see the Avatar preview in theaters they turn to me and say that looks nothing like the cartoon. I just roll my eyes and say that's because its not about the Cartoon. I swear when this comes out people are still going to be confused that this is based on the Cartoon.

Heh, I'm hearing a little bit of that too, Palmer. It doesn't help that the other Avatar movie is coming out 8 months later.

ONE reason why AVATAR can (not saying it will) make $500m...

Whereever you go, doesn't matter whether it is a movie forum or a box office forum, everyone's talking about how AVATAR will do at the box office. I lost count how many AVATAR threads are here at KJ or at BOM or at other places.
If so many people are so sure of its failure why keep they talking about it on and on and on...

I checked SHH yesterday and they have an 186 page thread that started late october. That was after 1st thread grew too big. I am sure it will bring in audience OW and then it is all WOM.

We have a Superman thread thats like 40 pages long and BOM has one thats even longer I think. It doesnt mean a thing. It could be just the same few people arguing back and forth

Well you care enough to post about 100 posts or more (?) about AVATAR and its unavoidable failure (in your eyes)...

Everyone seems to have forgotten that Dances with Wolves is a psuedo remake of A Man Called Horse and The Run of the Arrow. They were 20/30 years old when Dances was released.

It's because a lot of web people either are pretty young or have little to no film history knowledge... plus it's trendy to bash DANCES WITH WOLVES, so if you say that it's that in space, it sounds bad.

But the story is so old and archetypal, you could easily say it's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in space, which suddenly makes it sound awesome. Or LAST OF THE MOHICANS in space. Cameron has also cited numerous other films and stories as influences, most of which are classics. The fact that he's even aware of the mythic history he's drawing from is a good thing, not a bad one.

Remember, there is nothing new under the sun. Heck, even DISTRICT 9 featured a human protagonist working for an evil corporation who ends up becoming the very creatures being exploited by them.

Let me guess... you are on the marketing team for Fox.

Back to the topic, I think the success (or failure) of Avatar will hinge on how different the actual product is from people's perceived product. So far I've been hearing Avatar is a sci-fi fantasy epic with a romantic touch. Does this ring a deja vu? Didn't we have Wall-E a year ago?

While I don't doubt this can make more than Wall-E did given the IMAX appeal of live-action movies and holiday legs, $500 million is a stretch. To be eligible for the $500 million club, the final product on the screen will have to be something that has not yet been given away by the trailer or the marketing campaign. But I don't see this happening.

The early review from Germany is extremely positive. If the majority of reviews follow suit, then I think word of mouth will be very good. (I'd discount the "Vietnam and Iraq" metaphors, since I think that's a perception brought by the reviewer -- if the original STAR WARS came out today, there'd be a certain set of people claiming it was a direct commentary on Vietnam and Iraq.)

The tracking numbers are also pointing towards a strong, but not record-breaking December opening (high 60s, mid 70s). Assuming that doesn't change, average legs for a big December release will get AVATAR until the low- to mid-200s. If it has somewhat better legs (IMAX and 3-D will help) or really good legs, it'll go way above that; this could also happen if it opens larger than tracking and/or has stronger-than-expected legs through the holidays.

The movie will get me in IMAX opening weekend, and likely purchasing the Blu Ray when it comes out. About 3 movies a year get that from me, but this is very much my type of film.

You don't think a lefty reviewer would comment on current wars while reviewing a present day STAR WARS?

All the mentions of Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, and bin Laden didn't hurt the LOTR movies, so why do you think it'll hurt AVATAR?

it's crazy that my range for this movie is still like 250-450m a few days before it opens. I guess it all really depends on whether or not Cameron manages to reignite at least a little bit of that Titanic everybody-loves-it-ness that propelled his last film to such great heights. Even if it misses out on that, what with its awesome action and IMAX and likely Oscar nominations, it should still manage to take the winter pretty handily.

at the moment, i'd go with like 67/300