AVATAR Box Office: Solid Grosses on Non-Holiday Monday

Stephen Lang, Sam Worthington in Avatar (Mark Fellman / 20th Century Fox)

James Cameron's Avatar continues to keep the domestic box office abuzz even if overall figures have dropped dramatically now that the year-end holiday season is over. The sci-fi adventure epic earned an estimated $8.1 million on Monday, a 53.4 percent drop from Sunday according to Box Office Mojo. Avatar's total domestic take currently stands at $360.2m. Partly thanks to inflation and 3D/IMAX surcharges, Avatar is now the 14th highest grosser of all time, ahead of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993, $357.1m) and edging closer and closer to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004, $370.8m).

Avatar, which today received a Producers Guild Award nomination, stars Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Laz Alonso, Giovanni Ribisi, CCH Pounder, and West Studi.

All other top-ten films had worse Sunday-to-Monday drops than Avatar. With kids back in school, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel fared the worst, with a drop of more than 70% and earnings of 2.2m.

Others hanging in there at the beginning of 2010 are Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law's Sherlock Holmes, with $2.9m; Meryl Streep's It's Complicated, with $1.4m; Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side, with $824,000; and George Clooney's Up in the Air, with $815,000.

Back among the top ten is The Twilight Saga: New Moon, as the Robert Pattinson-Kristen Stewart-Taylor Lautner vehicle earned another $314,000 (total $288.2m).