It’s safe to say 2015 has been one of the craziest years ever in terms of box office history. If you haven’t been paying attention to movies at all this year, first of all, why weren’t you on this website and secondly, why are you on this website now?
You may have heard a record or two thrown around in your every day life but in reality there are more than a handful new records for both the best and the worst films ever.
And because the best stories are rags to riches, I think it is appropriately if we start are way on the bottom and work our way up.
Here’s looking at you, kids.
Not making a lot of money when you only open on a dozen or less screens is expected. Unless you are The Grand Budapest Hotel, you will only get several thousand bucks. What is important in tracking failure is for the movies that don’t make a lot but open a wide release in the US. Usually the metric that people care about is at least 2,000 theaters across America. You probably never heard of Oogieloves In The BIG Balloon Adventure or Delgo, but they are the number 1 and 2 worst openings ever for films that have reached 2,000 theaters and have been there for a few years now. Those are both animated films.
Instead, this year we received We Are Your Friends, a live action movie with Zac Efron about electronic dance music. It opened to a measly $1.76 million. It was the worst live action opening of all time (that wasn’t a re-release). Unfortunately, it couldn’t even hold on to its fame for that long. Just two months later, two more films on the same weekend decided to suck harder. Rock The Kasbah had only $1.47 million and Jem and the Holograms $1.38 million. Before this year, the live action winner was P2, a shitty thriller from 2007 and even that made at least $2 million.
If we change our standards, November saw the worst live action film opening of all time with at least 2,500 theaters. Victor Frankenstein, starring Professor X and Harry Potter, managed to win that title.
Just for getting the whole picture, there are two other great movie mentions. United Passions is the story of FIFA, starring Tim Roth, and it came out right when FIFA was being bombarded with corruption claims. It opened to only 10 theaters and made $607 its opening weekend. Even better, it made only $9 in Phoenix, meaning in the first three days only one person decided to burn his money and waste his time.
More recently, a small time thriller named Momentum opened up to also 10 screens in the UK. It’s opening weekend take translated to about $69. Ouch. And that one had Morgan Freeman in it.
I heard she was competing against the bear in The Revenant for Best CGI Female.
Overall, not as many films can be represented in the best money makers, because it is hard to get people out of their couches and into the theaters. With VOD and high food prices and shootings, people would rather stay in their homes. And yet, here we are, studios making bank.
The biggest winner of 2015 (so far) is Jurassic World. This film is part of a franchise that, realistically, only had one great film with Jurassic Park and two average sequels. But nostalgia and a return to the park at the right time in the summer was the key to its success. The most important record it broke was the Biggest Opening Weekend Domestic, with $208.8 million, just a hair over The Avengers at $207 million. It also won Biggest Opening Weekend Internationally and of course, Biggest Worldwide Opening Weekend. .
Jurassic World finished third all time in the domestic box office, only about $6 million behind Titanic. It was the fastest to reach basically every milestone you can think of monetarily.
But a new challenger approaches. Most people think that Star Wars: The Force Awakens, coming out this Friday will break all of the records Jurassic World crushed and more. There are even official odds for record breaking potential and plot points, because who doesn’t like to gamble. I know I do. I made a bet with someone that it wouldn’t beat the 3 day weekend Jurassic World domestic record. I am probably going to lose $20 now. Mostly because it has broken pre-sale records and other ridiculous things.
The hype is running this film to the ground. No matter how good it actually is, I can’t imagine anyone speaking bad about it for months. It is like they forgot The Phantom Menace hype and disappointment. Some people just want to set themselves up for sadness, I guess.
And the CGI for John Candy is absolutely stunning here.
Now, Jurassic World isn’t the only film to make money this year. A handful of films broke a billion worldwide, and a lot of films became surprise successes with relatively low budgets.
The biggest winner overall, hands down, is Universal Studios. Jurassic World, Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Minions all broke $1 billion worldwide, and outside of Avengers, all three of them come from Universal.
It was the fastest studio to ever reach $1 billion (domestic) in only 165 days. As of August, it had over $5.5 billion from its films, making it the best year a studio has ever had. I don’t know its official end of year numbers now, but basically every movie they released was a box office smash. They had the best of luck with Straight Outta Compton, Pitch Perfect 2, Fifty Shades of Grey and Everest.
Their only loose end was Jem and the Holograms. Yes, the biggest dud of the year. But with profits like that, they wouldn’t even bat an eye at the film.
And Pitch Perfect 2 wasn’t even the best Anna Kendrick musical this year!
The main purpose for this article is to highlight how extreme the box office numbers were from this year. With overall theater attendance going down, it is refreshing to see such high box office totals for a wide variety of films. People might be going to the movies just as often as before, but they are also refusing to see anything that may be bad or mediocre. That is what Redbox and Netflix are for after all.
2016 is looking to be the first year mostly controlled by super hero films, with roughly 1,000 being released and no more Hunger Games. I can’t imagining anything being as high or low as this year has turned out to be.
Thanks for reading!
