THG has already sold way more copies than I expected it to, I hardly think it's failed or done wrong in any way. It also grossed more and sold more on home video than even you thought it would so come on, get off its back.
Wasn't it because it was released with fairly few days to go in the week? So 7m might be a prediction for its first seven days which would in fact go over two weeks.
Possibly, but it's legs were better than expected pretty much everywhere because it's supposedly a good film. I wouldn't discount the possibility of a quality film drawing more people in. They tend to be conservative with their final totals.
Avatar didn't do that much for 2009, 3.4m, and if you take it out, that year is still over 140m tickets. It sold 7.9m tickets in 2010, and that year was well under 2009 at 126.6m.While 2001 and 2002 may be outliers, but these days 2009 is the outlier, getting over 140m was quite regular up until 2005. Since then, it's only been over once.