I'm not quite shocked it will almost certainly overtake Avatar domestic. I didn't call it or anything, but it's not surprising. The race for domestic has always been close, with most new #1s usually just marginally overtaking the previous. Except Titanic of course. That was a wrecking. $600mil in 1997 dollars is kind of obscene.
Worldwide though, I don't think there was ever a chance. Two. Billion. Dollars. You have to keep perspective of how insane that is for an overseas total, especially for the time. Like, it was so ludicrously far and away from anything that any other movie in history made. The Dark Knight, phenomenal critical and commercial success, wheezed its way across the line to become the 4th movie ever to make $1bil worldwide. A year later, Avatar doubled it without even including that #1 all time domestic gross.
Titanic was always the real monster though. The world will never again see something that performs like that beast. Avatar was the #1 movie for 7 weeks. Titanic was for 15. No other movie since has even managed half of that. And overseas, it's still the bigger movie in a lot of places like Japan. Avatar beats it out overall because of its crazy performance in emerging markets, which Titanic didn't have the benefit of in 1997/1998.
Anyway, what will be really interesting to see is how Star Wars does in China. Even in 2009 when Avatar obliterated records, China wasn't that big of a force. Now it's the second largest market and has already had higher grosses than America for western films, such as Pacific Rim, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Terminator Genysis, and Fast & Furious 7.
