LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Avatar" edged closer to the record North American haul of "Titanic" after earning $30 million during its seventh chart-topping weekend, distributor 20th Century Fox said on Sunday
James Cameron's 3-D sci-fi spectacular has grossed $594.5 million to date and should surpass the $601 million tally of the filmmaker's 1997 melodrama "Titanic" by Wednesday, the News Corp.-owned studio said.
The film last Monday broke the $1.843 billion record worldwide total of "Titanic." International data for the weekend were not immediately available.
The one caveat to the "Avatar" records is that sales are not adjusted for inflation, or for the fact that ticket prices were considerably higher for 3-D screenings.
Mel Gibson's first on-screen performance since 2002, the kidnap thriller "Edge of Darkness," opened at No. 2 with $17.1 million in sales. Still, it marked his worst opening since "Braveheart" launched with $9.9 million in 1995. He was last in theaters with "Signs," which opened to $60 million in 2002.
Gibson, who has directed two big movies since starring in "Signs," has kept a fairly low profile since his 2006 arrest for drunk-driving in Malibu when he made anti-Semitic comments.
Also new was the widely lambasted Walt Disney Co. romantic comedy "When in Rome," starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel. It opened at No. 3 with $12.1 million in sales.
Fox's "The Tooth Fairy," which was steady at No. 4 with $10 million in its second weekend; the total for the Dwayne Johnson comedy rose to $26 million at the box office. "The Book of Eli" fell two spots to No. 5 with $8.8 million; after three weeks, the Denzel Washington drama has earned $74 million.
"Edge of Darkness" and "The Book of Eli" were released by Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc..
(Reporting by Dean Goodman; Editing by Paul Simao)
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