From the New York Times:

Despite the estimated half-billion dollars spent on its production and marketing, “Avatar” may carry surprisingly little financial risk for Fox’s parent company, the News Corporation, even if it disappoints. That is because of shifting industry economics, reliance on outside investors and help from a network of allied companies and in-house business units.

Fox’s efforts underscore how studios generally have been able to minimize their exposure at a time of blockbuster budgets — albeit at the cost of limiting their profit potential as well.

The final cost of the film has not been tallied, as Mr. Cameron, who has worked on the film for 15 years, and his collaborators, as far-flung as Weta Digital in New Zealand, continue to complete their work. Published reports have put the production budget at more than $230 million.

Read the whole piece here.

I was expecting to start seeing stories like this sooner, but better late than never.  Considering that this is James Cameron's first narrative film since the famously budgeted Titanic, comparisons are reasonable.

So, the important bits of information we can take from this article are the following:  Avatar's budget is $230 million, but that doesn't reflect the total budget of the film; and around $150 million will be spent on marketing the film.

So can this movie make its money back?  Basically for Avatar to break even in its theatrical run it needs to make around $650,000,000 so that the theater owners can get it's 30% back from ticket sales.  Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made a total of $833 million if you include international ticket sales.  So I guess it could turn a profit, just not a very big one until it hits Blu-Ray...