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In its second week on the international box office chart, Rio has widened its lead at the top, emerging as the worldwide choice among movies in the first third of 2011 (until we see how Fast Five fares).
New to the international ranking this week, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family has no overseas gross to date, and its international tally will remain at or near zero given Perry’s track record. Water for Elephants has a few million dollars in international box office now and might build to $35 million or so overseas. Finally, African Cats has no overseas grosses yet, but given the performance of Earth and Oceans we should expect an international take of up to $60 million for African Cats. Add that to the $20 million domestic number and Cats suddenly has a worldwide total of $80 million. Certainly not a blockbuster, but not bad for a relatively low cost documentary.
Before going to the worldwide table for January-April movies, let’s take a look back at April 2010 and see how the films released in that month fared in total: domestic, international and home exhibition (DVD, PPV, etc.). The chart below ranks each April 2010 film by its “ultimate” number, with blue representing the domestic gross, red the international tally, and green the DVD. The first thing that jumps out is the “craps” nature of the business. The right roll of the dice can result in absolutely enormous returns, a few rolls end in middling to decent returns, but most rolls end in misery. This distribution is fairly typical for a month, although a summer month will usually need to go out to $800 million or more for the lucky few movies at the top.
The other thing that sticks out is the large contribution that international can make to movies of all sizes and the relatively modest upside of DVD across the board. Of course, neither the strength of overseas sales nor the weakness of home video is news — it’s just that the picture could not be any clearer. Finally, individual quirks can be identified, such as Tyler Perry’s complete lack of appeal overseas. Why Did I Get Married Too? and The Last Song had nearly identical domestic grosses, but the former fell far short of a $100 million ultimate while the latter easily passed that benchmark. Future versions of this chart will include estimates for pay TV, cable TV and broadcast TV rights. If you have any suggestions for the chart, please feel free to comment below.
Turning back to the January-April 2011 films, see the complete ranking chart after the jump. (As you will see, the Jan-Apr chart remains in table form and will be converted to a graphic when the graph can handle 40-50 titles.)
Rank ($ MILLIONS) Impact
LW TW Worldwide Domestic Overseas Ratio
2 2 Rango 238 122 116 .95
3 3 Green Hornet 229 99 130 1.32
4 4 Just Go with It 210 107 103 .97
5 5 Battle: Los Angeles 199 83 116 1.34
6 6 Gnomeo and Juliet 179 101 78 .77
8 7 Hop 173 126 47* .37
7 8 No Strings Attached 145 71 74 1.05
12 12 Adjustment Bureau 114 63 51 .81
14 14 The Rite 94 33 61 1.85
15 15 Season of the Witch 84 25 59 2.38
17 17 Big Mommas: Like Father 79 38 41 1.09
16 18 Paul 77 37 40 1.07
18 19 Sucker Punch 77 34 43* 1.27
19 20 Source Code 76 57 19* .34
21 24 Scre4m 62 44 18* .41
25 25 Red Riding Hood 59 37 23 .60
— 26 Madea’s Big Happy Fam 56 56 0 .00
27 27 Insidious 56 56 0 .00
26 28 Diary Wimpy Kid 2 54 52 2 .04
28 29 The Mechanic 51 29 22 .76
29 31 Hanna 45 45 0* .00
30 33 Arthur 38 38 0* .00
31 34 The Roommate 37 37 0 .00
32 35 Mars Needs Moms 37 21 16 .76
34 36 The Eagle 32 19 13 .71
35 37 Beastly 29 28 1 .04
36 39 Your Highness 23 21 2* .09
37 40 Country Strong 20 20 0 .00
— 41 African Cats 18 18 0* .00
TOTAL Jan-Apr Movies 3826 2239 1586* .71
The worldwide box office ranking now includes movies released in 2011 through April 22. About the Author
