'Avatar' topples 'Titanic' to become top-grossing movie ever

The king of the world director James Cameron has gone on to beat himself at his own game.

Towards the end of the last decade, the Cameron's epic Titanic became the most successful movie ever with global sales of $1.843 billion.

His latest movie, the sci-fi fantasy epic Avatar has now taken the number one spot this week as the all-time global box office champ after making $1.859 billion in just six weeks.

Avatar is the tale of an ex-soldier who uses a mind-controlled avatar or remotely controlled body - to infiltrate a native tribe on a planet light-years away from Earth.

Avatar's domestic take of $554.9 million still slightly trails Titanic's $600.7 million, but overseas it has taken in slightly more, $1.30 billion to the earlier film's $1.24 billion.

Given the current estimated average ticket prices of $7.46, Avatar still needs to sell about 50 million more tickets before it matches the inflation-adjusted domestic gross of Titanic, according to a box office site, the-numbers.com.

Experts say many moviegoers are choosing to pay a higher ticket price to see the film in its 3-D version, bolstering its earnings.

In its sixth weekend, the movie dropped only 18 percent domestically and 16 percent internationally, according to Fox.

Avatar is still playing on 16,000 screens worldwide, with 72 percent of its ticket sales coming from 3-D screens.