"Avatar" Is Biggest Box Office Draw Ever

Updated at 7:00 p.m. EST

"Avatar" has surpassed "Titanic" at the box office, topping $1.8 billion worldwide.

"To get to those numbers," says Hollywood.com's Paul Dergarabedian, "you need repeat business, you need great word-of-mouth, and you need to grab an audience basically across the board."

It's been the weekly box office champ since its debut six weeks ago.

"Avatar," observes CBS News Correspondent Ben Tracy, has made director James Cameron king of the world again. He out-did his "Titanic" success by creating an entirely new world for moviegoers, combining state-of-the art 3D visual effects with old-fashioned romance.

Cameron sent his actors to the University of Southern California to have their faces scanned. The data from those images helped create the digital characters - the shape of their faces and eyes right down to every pore and wrinkle.

"You can give that sense of they're really there, in that world and I think that was one of the strengths of the movie," said Cryus Wilson with the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC.

Avatar star Sigourney Weaver says Cameron "has so much respect for the audience and the individual theater-goer, he wanted to give them the story he dreamed of seeing when he was 14."

Still, Cameron was criticized early-on for the film's budget, said to be nearly half-a-billion dollars.

But Cameron was having none of it, saying, "You learn to tune all that out and just say, 'Wait until people see the film. Then we'll know if we're in trouble or if we're in good shape."

That, understates Tracy, is no longer in question, with "Avatar" attracting a worldwide audience of both men and women, young and old. "And it ain't over yet," Dergarabedian points out. "This film could do $2 billion worldwide, something unthinkable" before.

Cameron is giving a huge boost to 3D film making - 3D showings of "Avatar," with their higher ticket prices make up 65 percent of the film's overseas box office and nearly 80 percent of its U.S. draw. That helped "Avatar" sink "Titanic's" 13-year-old box office record in just 40 days.

"Now it paves the way for other movies to be made with this technology," said Dergarabedian. "I think that will pay dividends in the future for Hollywood and for individual filmmakers."

Yet, says Tracy, "Avatar" will need some very special effects to beat the inflation-adjusted box office champ.

In 1939, 'Gone with the Wind" took in $400 million worldwide. That's the equivalent of some $6 billion in today's dollars.