Record Breaking Overseas Box Office

Movie studios will have to really start taking foreign ticket sales into account. 2010 was a record breaking year at the box office overseas, beating the record set in 2009 by almost 20%.

Thanks to films like Avatar and the growing popularity of 3D, the overseas box office went from $10.7 billion in 2009 to a whopping $12.7 million in 2010. Even non-3D movies benefits, with titles such as Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows raking in $610 million, and Inception grabbing its $531 million share of the pie.

Both Fox and Disney earned over $2 billion total in foreign sales, with Paramount almost hitting that mark with $1.9 billion. Sony and Universal both lagged with $1.3 and $1.2 billion respectively, but it's still nothing to scoff at.

The most surprising figure? The international box office sales averaged %167 of the domestic total for the top 20 highest grossing films of the year. Wonder how that will shape the film industry if this trend continues.

Now if only we could get it to work in reverse, and get more theatrical releases for those quality foreign films...