Top 5 $$makers of 2001

[Grouch]

This just in from IMDb's daily Studio Brief:

Five films earned more than $200 million during 2001 and one film came within a hair's breadth of doing so, according to figures released by Exhibitor Relations Tuesday. The five were Warner Bros.' Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ($286.1 million), DreamWorks' Shrek ($267.7 million), Disney's Monsters, Inc. ($236 million), New Line's Rush Hour 2 ($226.1 million) and Universal's The Mummy Returns ($202 million). Another Disney film, Pearl Harbor, came within $1.5 million of reaching the $200-million mark. Although preliminary figures project that the box office will establish a new record of $8.14 billion for the year -- a jump of 9 percent over 2000 -- Daily Variety observed today (Wednesday) that more than half of the added revenue can be attributed to higher ticket prices and that it is not clear whether actual attendance exceeded the record of 1.44 billion admissions recorded in 1998.


And yet, overall, it was a year for remarkably bad films. Movie marketing workerbees must be giving each other high-fives along about now....

[pluckyduck]

And yet, overall, it was a year for remarkably bad films. Movie marketing workerbees must be giving each other high-fives along about now....

I've been thinking the same thing myself.

First of all, it is not fair that Planet of the Apes has done as well as it has. Makes me mad. Don't reward people for stinking the joint out with a remake of a legendary film. And what's more not fair is that I've heard enough good things about the extra features on the DVD to make me want to consider giving them more just to check it out.

Grumble. That's what's wrong with the movie business today.... grumble. Reward the schmucks who screw stuff up. Hell, Waterworld might have made 200 million in this environment.

Of course, something like Following is what's right with the movie business today. A small, inexpensive film gets an opportunity to develop a following (couldn't resist) because of the way it is marketed in the secondary outlets. For DH, a traditional Hollywood guy and not a seeker of the obscure, to have picked that DVD up at Blockbuster means that it had to have been marketed well enough there to catch his attention. It had to have been placed in the right spot...and, I noticed that the DVD box was exceptionally nice. Metallic silver and black, excellent graphic design, very manly and not low budget Art Film looking.

Ah well, the original point. It was an exceptionally bad year for movies, yes.

Andrea

[kurt_messick]

I hate it when bad films are rewarded. I'm used to good films going un-noticed (hopefully to find a following in video formats, which many often do).

Alas...

I keep a list of all my DVDs, some others do that, and occasionally swap them with friends so that we can "check out" a DVD before buying it. If nobody has one, then it's not so hard to rent it, pass it along, and then return it before the time limit.

By working together, people can outcheap the system and starve the media executives.