Avatar

You may have read that Avatar did huge business over the holidays, with its worldwide box-office take topping $1 billion over the New Year’s Day weekend. What’s even more impressive is that, though the arrival of January school days should slow its take considerably, it’s still a phenomenon — yesterday, the first non-holiday weekday in January, Avatar took in an estimated $8.1 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

Sherlock Holmes is going great guns with nearly $3 million on the same day, but $8 million is, frankly, a phenomenal indicator of sustained interest in the film. It’s a sign that theaters are still clogged with moviegoers who are eager to get a look at Cameron’s lavishly realized 3D fantasy world, and perhaps a harbinger of happy returns for the next studio that steps up with a truly ambitious live-action 3D project. (And could it help drive adoption of home 3D displays later this year?)

But rival studios should be wary of mounting their own big-ticket 3D adventures. Maybe you have to be James Cameron to really make this work — when the smoke clears, it looks like Cameron is going to be the helmer behind the number-one and the number-two highest-grossing movies of all time. (However, it would take very long legs for Avatar to actually outpace Cameron’s reigning champ Titanic.) That means it’s not just the 3D effects that made Avatar fly. It’s got a little something extra. And that might be even harder to duplicate than Cameron’s eye-opening FX work.

In other Avatar news: