James Cameron and Twentieth Century Fox officials should publicly thank all the other movie studio heads for the runaway success of "Avatar."
Cameron's sci-fi/fantasy adventure film is now the No. 1 movie of all time, in terms of total grosses. "Avatar" has made more than $700 million in the United States alone, and has grossed more than $2.5 billion in ticket sales worldwide.
It's also easily bested Cameron's earlier film "Titanic," which had been No. 1 for more than 10 years. (That film made $600 million, $1.8 billion worldwide.)
According to many reports, more than 70 percent of the box office receipts for "Avatar" came from ticket sales for the 3-D and 3-D IMAX versions of the film.
It's worth noting that these versions cost more than normal, 2-D movies — as much as $2 or $3 more, depending on the location and depending on the so-called "convenience fee" for special glasses to see the 3-D imagery.
Also, in many locations, there were no supposed "bargain matinees" for the movie. Theaters were charging full price to see "Avatar" all day.
And, getting back to my original point, it was almost uncontested during its peak run, thanks to the scheduling of the other studios.
During "Avatar's" most successful weekends, there was nothing else playing in 3-D. Or at least nothing that could be considered serious competition.
By the way, it will be interesting to see how "Avatar" fares this weekend, when it loses at least 75 percent of its 3-D screens to Disney's new live-action/CGI version of "Alice in Wonderland."
Some analysts are predicting as much as an 80 percent dropoff in ticket sales for "Avatar," which will have more 2-D than 3-D screens for a change.
MONEY-SEE, MONKEY-DO.
In typical Hollywood fashion, the other studios are probably expecting similar successes for their slate of 3-D format features.
Among the upcoming releases that will have at least part of their runs in 3-D are "How to Train Your Dragon" (March 26), "Clash of the Titans" (April 2), "Iron Man 2" (May 7), "Shrek Forever After" (May 21), "Toy Story 3" (June 18) and "Despicable Me" (July 9).
But that also means there are so many 3-D format films that theaters may not have enough screens to show them all at one time.
And that is one of the reasons why the relatively short "release window" for Disney's new "Alice in Wonderland" — it's expected to play at least a week less than most normal films — makes perfect sense.
It also makes a threatened boycott of Disney and "Alice" by British movie theater chain Odeon seem more ridiculous.
Even if "Alice" has a huge dropoff after its first week, the film is expected to do extremely well during that time period and during its supposed 12-week run.
And what do Odeon officials plan to show in its place, anyway? The now-fading "Avatar?" As the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants says, "Good luck with that!"
e-mail: jeff@desnews.com