News Corp. will earn $350 million to $400 million from James Cameron's "Avatar" once the world's top-grossing film is also released on pay television and DVD, said two people with knowledge of its financial performance.

The sum represents a cut of about 40 percent for News Corp. from as much as $1 billion that the film is expected to earn for its Twentieth Century Fox and "Avatar" investors, said the people, who declined to be named because the projections are private. Fox also collects a distribution fee on the box-office revenue.

News Corp.'s share amounts to almost half of the New York-based company's average quarterly operating profit in the past year. It also highlights what chairman and chief executive officer Rupert Murdoch gave up when he took on investors to hedge the risks on the movie, produced for about $300 million, according to one of the people. New York-based Dune Entertainment owns about 40 percent and London-based Ingenious Media Holdings has the rest.

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