Twelve years after his last work Titanic, Hollywood director James Cameron's new sci-fi epic Avatar knocked the world out by topping 1 billion dollars three weeks after its opening, the fastest ever in history.

According to its distributor 20th Century Fox, the highly budgeted 3-D movie has taken in 352.1 million U.S. dollars in North America and totaled 1.02 billion dollars worldwide till last Sunday, ranking fourth on the list of biggest box-office movies.

Blockbusters earning more than Avatar in history include Titanic (1997), with a gross of 1.84 billion dollars, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), totaling 1.12 billion, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006), selling 1.07 billion.

Based on an 80-page treatment written by Cameron himself, the story is set in the future, when a paralyzed war veteran Jake, dispatched on a mission to the planet Pandora, encounters the native inhabitants there and falls in love with a blue humanoid Na'vi.

After its global premiere in mid-December, the movie was "like a runaway freight train" and kept "doing business", said Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston. "I think everybody has to see 'Avatar' once."

"Even people who don't normally go to the movies, they've heard about it and are saying, 'I have to see it.' Then there are those people seeing it multiple times," he added.

Avatar has also swept the box office in Asia since its debut in late December. For the first weekend of the New Year, Avatar drew 1.25 million people to the theater in South Korea, said Yonhap.

Cast member Zoe Saldana poses at the premiere of "Avatar" at the Mann's Grauman Chinese theatre in Hollywood, California December 16, 2009. [Xinhua/Reuters]