Warner Brothers remains a mere $61 million ahead of second-place Disney, looking at worldwide grosses for films released in 2013. Each of the top two studios reaped about $50 million this past week, mostly from overseas activity for The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (Warner Brothers) and Frozen (Disney). For a complete ranking of 2013 films individually by worldwide performance click here.
We will begin tracking 2014 in a few weeks.
YEAR TO DATE BOX OFFICE. Starting this year, we will be tracking worldwide box office to date (for Hollywood films) in addition to North American box office for those films (those that play at least 400 North American theaters at some point). A reminder: we define the start of each year as the first Monday after New Year’s Day, and our year ends on the Sunday after New Year’s Day the following calendar year. 2014 is off to a normal start, just under $200 million the first week, in line with recent years (see table below). When we add in overseas grosses for Hollywood films, the worldwide box office volume this first week of 2014 already approaches $500 million. (The most recent week’s numbers are based on weekend estimates, which are usually at worst a couple of percentage points off from the final weekend tallies.)
| Box Office YEAR TO DATE | |||
| (billions) | Week 1 | ||
| North America | Worldwide | ||
| 2014 | $0.194 | $0.486 | Jan 6-Jan 12 |
| 2013 | $0.185 | n/a | Jan 7-Jan 13 |
| 2012 | $0.224 | n/a | Jan 2-Jan 8 |
| 2011 | $0.161 | n/a | Jan 3-Jan 9 |
| 2010 | $0.217 | n/a | Jan 4-Jan 10 |
The past six weeks in North America are running 8% ahead of the same six weeks last year and 13% above the four-year average in the same time frame ($1.217 billion).
| North American Box Office LAST SIX WEEKS | ||
| (billions) | Week 48-Week 1 | |
| 2014 | $1.373 | Dec 2-Jan 12 |
| 2013 | $1.272 | Dec 3-Jan 13 |
| 2012 | $1.121 | Nov 28-Jan 8 |
| 2011 | $1.134 | Nov 29-Jan 9 |
| 2010 | $1.341 | Nov 30-Jan 10 |
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