INTERNATIONAL BOX OFFICE NUMBERS: Fast Fives Moves Into Strong Position

• Tweet
• Email

• Tweet
• Email

>

Fast Five enters the worldwide January-April box office chart in the #2 position, with plenty more upside in its overseas numbers.  When the final results are in, Fast Five will probably be the #1 movie worldwide for the first third of the year, followed by Rio and Rango.   

The graphic below shows the domestic and international grosses for all 47 films released between January and April at over 500 theaters.  Rio is currently at #1 with just over $400 million worldwide, followed by Fast Five with a current worldwide total of just over $250 million (although it is destined to pass Rio in a few short weeks).  Notice the classic distribution of movies, with a few hits at the top followed by a very long list of losers, which have no chance of covering negative costs, marketing expenses, and distribution costs.  Of course, one mega-hit (close to $500 million worldwide this time of year or $1 billion in the summer season) can cover the failure of many duds and still leave a tidy profit for the studio.  Or can it?  The world of “Hollywood accounting” and profit participants is an extremely complex topic, which I will leave to our resident business affairs expert Mitch Salem in a future post.

Meantime, take a look at the following chart and see the not so fine line between delirious success and despondent failure in movie-making.  (For those of you wanting to see the numbers presented in a more traditional table, don’t worry — the Top 25 worldwide film table can be found after the jump.) 

The more conventional table of worldwide box office grosses can be seen by clicking “Read more.” 

 6  7  Gnomeo and Juliet      176         98        78       .79
 7  8  Hop                    172        113        58*      .52
 8  9  No Strings Attached    146         71        75      1.06

The worldwide box office ranking now includes movies released in 2011 through April 29. 

The total numbers at the bottom of the chart show that worldwide box office has crossed the $4.2 billion line, in this, the weakest third of the year.  A reminder, we divide the year into thirds (Winter/Spring movies released between January and April, Summer Movies between May and August, and Fall/Holiday movies between September and December).  We will chart the January-April movies through the end of May, when we will start tracking the international audience for the May-August films.      

Check back tomorrow for a look at the mid-week domestic performance of movies currently in release (a combined look at Monday and Tuesday numbers).