Compared to The Boat That Rocked (TBTR), Avatar was exhibited in a much wider and grander scale, as its budget allowed it to become much more appealing to the UK audience than TBTR. This was due to a number of things, for example, Avatar was the film that paved the way for 3D technology to become more popular and commonplace in film. It was exhibited in cinemas in both regular HD and several 3D formats such as Real D 3D, Dolby 3D, XpandD 3D, MasterImage 3D and IMAX 3D. In addition, in a few select cinemas, it was exhibited with 4D technology, where the screen contained things such as fans, water jets and shaking seats in order to make the experience even more immersive. In contrast, TBTR was only shown in regular HD, which made the exhibition duller and meant that it was up to the marketing campaign and the quality of the film to make the film appeal to audiences.
However, although TBTR's exhibition was somewhat lacking, the fact that the production company, Working Title Films, is owned by the distribution company Universal means that the exhibited film would be watched by the target audience as intended due to the synergy between the different sections of the main company. This vertical integration was also evident within 20th Century Fox, the company that produced Avatar. The DVD for Avatar was released by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and as part of a parent company, it meant that the exhibited DVD/Bluray could be better advertised and subsequently made to appeal to the UK audience.
Both Avatar and TBTR were released on DVD and Blu-ray, however, Avatar was also released as a 3D film. The technology for showing 3D films isn't readily available to the general public, which means that anyone who wanted to watch the 3D version of Avatar was forced to watch it in the cinema. The lack of technology also prevents the film being pirated, as it is pointless to download a film you cannot watch. Both films have a sort of piracy prevention, as they were released on Blu-ray which cannot be copied at the moment, however, the DVD version can still be pirated, which gives Avatar an advantage in cinema exhibition.
Avatar premiered in London on the 10th of December 09 and released worldwide from the 16th-18th. However, it was initially set for a release on May 22nd the same year, but was subsequently pushed back to allow for more post production time and for more cinemas to install brand new 3D projectors. This would have allowed for more British cinemas to install the technology and thus allow more people to have the immersive 3D experience. The film had also been marketed as an 'event' film, the must-see film of the year, which meant that there was almost no competition in cinemas over which film to watch, almost everyone watched Avatar. On the other hand, TBTR did not have such a marketing campaign, which meant that when it was released to cinemas on April Fool's Day, it had to compete with films such as "Monsters Vs. Aliens", "Fast and Furious" and "17 Again". As a large percentage of the potential audience for TBTR was of the younger generation, it meant that they would be more attracted to the family film (MVA), high octane action (F&F) or the more girl orientated film (17A). As a result, TBTR bombed and was a commercial failure, which cannot be said for Avatar, which became one of the highest grossing film of all time, in total over $2bn revenue.
