Avatar celebrated becoming the most successful movie of all time by staying in the top spot in the Kiwi charts. Dropping moderately despite the school holidays coming to an end, Avatar powered to another $500,000 to move ever closer to the Lord of the Rings: Return of the King’s New Zealand record, that Avatar will claim the all-time crown seems now a matter of when, rather than if.

It’s Complicated followed in an uncomplicated second position, slipping a reasonable 40% to scoop up another $200,000 from the mainly older audience. Total for the Alec Baldwin/Meryl Streep rom-com now stands a smidgeon under $1.5 Million, a great advertisement for counter-programming by distributors Paramount.

The weekend’s first new release, the awkwardly titled Did You Hear About The Morgans? slipped into third placed with a weak $157,00 bow. The Hugh Grant comedy performed relatively weakly despite heavy advertising and was demolished by the romantic competition It’s Complicated and should tumble down the charts in the weeks ahead.

Opening in half the theatres but nearly matching the Hugh Grant vehicle, Precious arrived on the back of award nominations and heavy critical praise to debut in fourth place. With months of hype and money-can’t-buy word of mouth from the likes of Oprah, the drama was able to generate the second best average in the top ten, behind the 3-D enhanced Avatar.

Fifth place belonged to the last of the week’s new releases, Mel Gibson’s Edge of Darkness. Performing very averagely after arriving with almost zero hype, the Kiwi-helmed (Martin Campbell) thriller was almost ignored by movie-goers who have been there and done that with much better revenge thrillers over the last decade.

Nine slid all the way into sixth place in its second week of release with lack of award nominations destroying the Oscar-bait’s chances of over-achieving, look for a better run on DVD though. Invictus also fell a long way down to seventh despite Morgan Freeman’s nomination during the week. Falling an alarming 53% it seems like Kiwi audiences just aren’t ready to revisit that final yet, if ever, especially when they’re pigeon-holed as the enemy.

Sherlock Holmes finally dropped out of the top five for the first time in seven weeks as it landed in eighth place this weekend. But with over $3.7 Million in the bank already and Iron Man 2 a couple of months away, Robert Downey Jr. looks set to have a brilliant 2010.

Up In The Air rode its multiple nominations to the slimmest decline of the weekend, with the topical drama sliding a mere 25% to see its total inch closer to the golden $1 Million mark. Rounding out the top ten was Peter Jackson with The Lovely Bones which seems to be destined to end its run at around $3.5 Million, by far the worst performing Jackson film for over a decade, but it’s hard to top King Kong and The Lord of the Rings.

Next week see the first real threat to Avatar’s reign as The Wolfman, Valentine’s Day and Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief both attack the Pandora champ. All three have a realistic chance of besting the Cameron flick but the real highlight of next weekend is the stunning Silent Wedding which will struggle to crack the top ten but is undoubtedly the best film to debut.

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