Avatar surged past the 500-million-dollar mark at the American box office this weekend, maintaining its push towards an all-time record, final figures showed Tuesday.
Avatar added to its haul over the four-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend with another 54.4 million dollars, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations said.
The movie has raked in more than 1.6 billion dollars worldwide since its release and is on course to overtake Cameron's 1997 Oscar-winner "Titanic," which remains the highest-grossing film of all time with 1.8 billion dollars.
In North America "Avatar" has earned 504.9 million dollars in only 32 days, and now stands third behind 2008 Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" (533.3 million dollars) and "Titanic" (600.8 million).
"The records are starting to look inevitable now -- Cameron will end up sinking his own ship," quipped Exhibitor Relations chief analyst Jeff Bock in reference to "Avatar's" pursuit of "Titanic."