'Avatar' Rules Box Office for Third Consecutive Weekend

The director's sci-fi opus Avatar remained atop the box office for the third straight weekend, raking in $68.3 million, according to studio estimates from Nielsen EDI.

The $300 million film has done $352.1 million domestically and nearly $500 million overseas, ensuring the film will be profitable for distributor 20th Century Fox.

The question now is how high Avatar flies. The picture dropped a minuscule 9% from last weekend and still won the box office derby by $30 million.

The movie is tracking similarly to Cameron's last film, Titanic, which was No. 1 for 16 straight weeks and became the highest-grossing film of all time with $600 million.

And while few people expect Cameron's new film to eclipse his old -- movie schedules are typically too full now to see a movie at No. 1 for more than a month --Avatar is already marching its way into the record books. It propelled Christmas weekend to its highest grosses on record, and last week the film became the third-fastest film to hit $300 million, behind only The Dark Knight and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Most films enjoyed only minor drop-offs from last weekend as the holidays kept people in theaters.

Robert Downey Jr.'s Sherlock Holmes fell a respectable 38% to do $38.4 million and $140.7 million overall.

Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel fared even better, dropping just 25% for third place and $36.6 million.

The Meryl Streep comedy It's Complicated was fourth with $18.7 million, followed by Sandra Bullock's The Blind Side, which followed with $12.7 million.

Thanks to Avatar and Holmes' strong holds, ticket sales were up 70% over the same weekend last year.

Final figures are due Monday.