The romantic drama Dear John took first place at the weekend box office, knocking Avatar off its pedestal after a seven-week run as the top movie. Dear John tells the story of a long-distance romance between a soldier fighting overseas after the 9/11 attacks and his girlfriend back home. Based on a novel by The Notebook author Nicholas Sparks, Dear John drew a crowd that was 84 percent female and nearly two-thirds under the age of 21.

Avatar fell to second place after a week in which the 3-D sci-fi epic broke the domestic box office record of $600.8 million that had been held by 1997's Titanic, bumping up its domestic take this weekend to $630.1 million. Avatar had already broken Titanic's global record of $1.8 billion, and has now taken in $2.2 billion worldwide. However, as an asterisk to those records, they were set with today's higher admission prices; Avatar has actually sold fewer tickets than Titanic. And although Avatar's seven weeks at Number One was the longest streak since Titanic, the 1997 blockbuster held on to first place for more than double that, 15 weekends.

The spy thriller From Paris With Love opened in third place, starring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers as CIA agents trying to stop a terrorist attack. And moving up into eighth place as it expanded into more theaters after seven weekends in limited release was the drama Crazy Heart, starring Jeff Bridges as a hard drinking country music star who's trying to turn his life around. Both Bridges and co-star Maggie Gyllenhaal have received Oscar nominations for their performances.

THIS WEEKEND'S TOP TEN MOVIES -- FEBRUARY 5-7

Dear John, $32.4 million
Avatar, $23.6 million
From Paris With Love, $8.1 million
Edge of Darkness, $7 million
The Tooth Fairy, $6.5 million
When in Rome, $5.5 million
The Book of Eli, $4.8 million
Crazy Heart, $3.7 million
Legion, $3.4 million
Sherlock Holmes, $2.6 million