Not that long ago, a narrative caught on about the feature film business being in trouble. Streaming services like Netflix are giving people less of a reason to leave the house for entertainment, critics argued. Big movie studios aren’t equipped to change with the times, competition from foreign markets will decrease American market share…there’s probably truth to all of that, but it doesn’t seem to have come to much, as THR reports that the American box office is on track to have its biggest year ever.
To put a number to it, the domestic box office has already collected $11 billion in revenue, just shy of the $11.4 billion it hoovered up in 2016. With big holiday movies like Aquaman, Merry Poppins Returns, Bumblebee and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse just around the corner, 2018 is all but guaranteed to smash that record, and all this without a mainline Star Wars movie to push things along.
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There was a Star Wars movie out this year, but it was the disappointing Solo, which made just shy of $400 million worldwide (granted: only in Hollywood is that not enough money). But who needs Solo when 2018 had movies like Black Panther ($700 million in the U.S.), Avengers: Infinity War ($678.8 million U.S.), Incredibles 2 ($608.6 million U.S.), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($416.8 million U.S.) and Deadpool 2 ($318.5 million U.S.)?
Those were the top five earners for the year, and you may have noticed that Disney is behind three of them. So Hollywood can be happy that it made so much money this year, but also a little cautious that so much is going to one company.
But monopolies are a 2019 problem. For now, happy watching.
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