Sunday
24Aug
The Big Picture's Summer Box Office Post-Mortem
Sunday, August 24, 2008 at 5:19PM
With only one weekend left to consider for Summer 2008 -
and considering it will only feature College, Babylon A.D., and
Disaster Movie - this is the perfect time to reflect on the highs and lows
of one of the biggest, if not the biggest, summer movie season ever. 
1 -
The Dark Knight ($500 million plus)
2 -
Iron Man ($317 million)
3 - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ($315 million)
4 - Hancock ($226 million)
5 - Wall-E ($216 million)
6 - Kung Fu Panda ($212 million)
7 - Sex and the City ($152 million)
8 - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian ($141 million)
9 - The Incredible Hulk ($134 million)
10- Wanted ($133 million)
The dollars might shift a little bit, but outside of Wanted and Hulk, no movies are poised to change positions at this point, and no other summer movies are in a position to challenge the top ten. Just taking into consideration the movies that have or will exceed $100 million, this summer session is good for at least $3 billion. All told, over 15 movies will have earnings in excess of $100 million, although not all of them can be considered hits. More about that later. There's nothing more to add about The Dark Knight until November or so, when Warner Bros. finally takes it out of theaters and directs its attention to DVD sales. It's clear that they're playing with house money at this point; even the most ambitious estimates had this movie making $400 million, which would have, in effect, doubled the box office haul of Batman Begins. Nobody, anywhere, was throwing out $500 million as a legitimate milestone for this or any other movie in 2008. It's a truly historic run, and when you consider that it could make as much as Indy Jones and Hancock combined - or close to it - it's a staggering number to put into perspective.Wall-E is probably the most misleading movie in the top ten. It cost $180 million to make (almost twice as much as Pixar's two biggest movies, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles), and it hasn't had a great international run yet. True, it won't even open in a lot of countries for some time, but it's the sixth highest-grossing movie Pixar has made, and when it's also the most expensive movie the studio has churned out, and by a considerable margin, its success is hard to gauge.
Clearly, Disney will have to rely on home video sales and a very strong international following. At this point, last year's Ratatouille appears to be the more profitable movie. In fact, Kung Fu Panda has also been more profitable, and unless Wall-E goes crazy overseas, Panda is the top earning animated movie of the summer, and most likely of the entire year. Sex and the City had a huge opening day, a big opening weekend, and an under-the-radar run to $150 million, making it the summer movie with the second-highest percentage of profit. I mean, this thing cost $65 million, and has a worldwide figure of six times that much. For The Dark Knight to earn 6 times its budget worldwide, it would need to make $1.1 billion. Mamma Mia!, which is relying on international box office, has already earned just over six times its budget, with France, Taiwan, Spain, and Russia still to go.Prince Caspian
The Incredible Hulk
Hellboy II
It's very possible that both Tropic Thunder, Wall-E, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars could wind up here, too, when the final tallies are counted. Conversely, there are some movies you might not have thought of as hits, but they should surpass 200% of their budgets, if they haven't already, and could conceivably hit 300%:
Journey to the Center of the Earth
In my book, 200% is a hit. So these would qualify them as hits. Of the movies on that list, it's Step Brothers that has the biggest mountain to climb. Somehow, that movie cost more to make than Mamma Mia!
And finally, how about a hand for the select few that actually exceeded that 300% hurdle:
The Dark Knight
Iron Man
Indiana Jones
Kung Fu Panda
Sex and the City
Wanted
Mamma Mia!
That's right: Only ten movies were absolutely, no-doubt-about-it, blockbusters this summer. Curiously, only four of them cost more than $100 million to produce, which should tell us something about the age of the mega-budget movie.
Reader Comments (3)
Very good article.Keep up the good work ;)
I think it's a shame that the lamest movies of the summer are on the list of near if not for sure blockbusters, those being The Mummy, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Happening (worst of the summer imo) and Made of Honor.
"Lamest" is only your opinion, The Mummy was 100 X better than Indiana Jones and should have done better in my opinion. Nice comparison article though.