• Ad Age, Monday, January 4, 2010 10:44 AM

During its third weekend, "Avatar" became only the fifth movie in history to pass the billion-dollar mark, the Los Angeles Times reports this morning. Andrew Hampp writes that the key ingredients in the costly gamble for 20th Century Fox were a delicate balance of patience and mass marketing.

First, it resisted the temptation to release any footage from the flick until a few months before the release. "This isn't a movie you want to start being too loud about too early on," says Pamela Levine, who shares 20th Century Fox's marketing presidency with Tony Sella. The studio also teamed with Coke Zero and McDonald's for promotions that gave fans access to the virtual augmented-reality world of the fictional moon Pandora. It also co-promoted with LG and Panasonic's 3-D technology and partnered with Mattel on toy merchandising.

In all, the studio is estimated to have spent $150 million in global marketing, including a series of long-form TV buys greased by some News Corp. sibling synergy. Foreign sales have been just as strong -- the movie took the No. 1 slot in 107 of 108 markets.

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