'Titanic 3D' Makes Chinese Box Office History

Film history's second highest-grossing release claimed still another box office record this past weekend, Deadline reports.

Twentieth Century Fox and IMAX jointly declared Wednesday that James Cameron's re-released historic epic "Titanic 3D" has set a new precedent as China's highest-grossing IMAX opening weekend, hauling in $7 million across the 64 formatted screens showing it.

China's IMAX opener mark was previously held by 2011's "Transformers: Dark Of The Moon". Globally, the re-release has now pulled in a total $15 million dollars on 408 screens. Counting conventional formats, "Titanic 3D" has earned more than $74 million in China since the country's April 10 opening and $210 million globally, as Box Office Mojo reports. The entire 1998 "Titanic" Chinese theatrical run made $44 million total.

The re-release also pushed the film's all-time gross over the $2-billion mark. The original 1997 debut run earned a total $1.84 billion, a record at that time. Of course, Cameron would shatter his own mark in 2009 with the release of "Avatar" ($2.78 billion), due to become a franchise that could rival the incredible grosses of the three "Transformers" films to date, with two sequels in the works targeted to be released by 2014. Both films earned Cameron Best Picture Academy Awards in 1998 and 2010, respectively.

By comparison, across 26 release territories, the board game adaptation "Battleship" pulled in a respectable $55 million to come in one very distant second place.