Summer Box Office Top Ten. Are These "Popular Achievements"?
Sunday, September 2, 2018 at 6:00PM by Nathaniel R
It's probably foolish to continue to poke fun at The Academy for their desperation in wanting to honor "Popular Achievements" but we can't help ourselves. It's so redundant. Box office success is its own reward and has nothing to do with "best" really, just with "success of brand awareness" and "delivering what people are expecting". The charts prove that it's getting more and more rare for an original picture to make it into the year end top ten. Even in the summer, with a much smaller field of contenders, it's still really hard for any movie that isn't a sequel to be one of "the most popular." Summer movie season kicked off on April 27th with The Avengers and ends right about now on Labor day weekend.
Herewith the TEN biggest hits of Summer 2018... How many of them did you see and if you controlled all box office, how much would they have earned?
| SUMMER TOP TEN (Figures as of 9/2/2018) |
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1. AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (April 27th) $678+ It was always going to be huge but the phenomenon of Black Panther helped push it way way over the gross of the preceding Avengers picture which made $459 domestic. (Global Gross to Date: $2 billion... the first Marvel movie to ever do that... Black Panther grossed $1.3 billion globally though it's a bigger hit than Infinity War in the US) |
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2. INCREDIBLES 2 (June 15th) $601+ Proving that audiences were really impatient for a sequel to the 2004 smash, they turned out in droves 14 years later, the rose still in full bloom (Global Gross to date: $1.1 billion) |
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3. JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (June 22nd) $414+ I guess $414 is a disappointment... but only in relation to the gross of its predecessor which was over $600. (Global Gross to date: $1.3 billion) |
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4. DEADPOOL 2 (May 18th) $318+ It was always going to be huge. But who knew that it would also be terrible?! (Global Gross to date: $734 million) |
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5. SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY (May 25th) $213+ Here we crash directly into the notion that "success" doesn't necessarily equate to "popularity" since people continually bitched about this picture. Only in the land of Brands as Movies does a $200+ gross equal "flop!" but this one kind of is since ---> (Global Gross to date: $392) |
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6. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP (July 6th) $213+ He's Marvel's smallest hero and also their smallest franchise-within-the-universe. But this one exceeded the comparatively smaller expectations. (Global Gross to date: $594) |
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7. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - FALLOUT (July 27th) $204+ The latest installment of Tom Cruise's sturdiest franchise (and he tried to build so many of them over the years) is well loved. Curiously if you adjust for ticket price inflation, this franchise has been earning less and less each time (with the exception of the 2006 Mission: Impossible 3, the runt of the litter by any measure) domestically. Worldwide, though, it's definitely going strong. (Global Gross to date: $647) |
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8. HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA 3 (July 13th) $161+ A sturdy franchise, making around the same figure each time. (Global gross to date; $485) |
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9. OCEANS 8 (June 8th) $139+ The all female version of this franchise did well for itself. Well enough to justify a sequel? We don't know yet. (Global gross to date: $291) |
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10. THE MEG (August 10th) $120+ The only original to make the top ten and "original" is pushing it, given how many monster shark movies have existed since Jaws (1975) basically created the Summer Movie Season as we know it. (Global Gross to date: $462) |
Box office success is its own reward and has nothing to do with "best" really, just with "success of brand awareness". The charts prove that it's increasingly rare for a non-sequel, non-animated, or non-superhero picture to make it into the year end top ten. Even in the summer, with a much smaller field of contenders, it's still really hard for an original to crack a top ten list.
| runners up |
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11. MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN (July 20th) $117+ Without Meryl Streep, this sequel's bankability was a big question mark, but it performed pretty well for itself in the US if nowhere near the size of the original overseas. (Global Gross to Date: $366+) |
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12. CRAZY RICH ASIANS (Augus 15th) $110+ This one will go strong through September and we hope it cracks $200 million because it's success means great things for future greenlights. Most movies fall in the 30-50% drop range each consecutive weekend... with the low end of that scale you're doing pretty well with word of mouth. This one is only doing like 6%-10% drops so far! (Global Gross to date: $130) |
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13. THE EQUALIZER 2 (July 20th) $100+ Dependable Denzel. The most consistent star at the box office, year after year. The movies are rarely monster hits but they do solid business. Here's a neat bit of trivia that kind of surprised me: If you adjust for inflation his biggest hit ever is The Pelican Brief (1993) with Julia Roberts. His biggest hit globally, not adjusted for inflation, is American Gangster (2007). (Global gross to date: $162) |
Reader Comments (20)
They could nominate automatically the 5 best grossing movies of the year. That would be stupid, but the stupidity would be on the nose
i don’t mind a popular film category but I’d like the rules to be more defined.
something like: voters vote for the best five films of the top 30 domestic box office, if any of those films received a Best Picture, best Animated Feature or Best Foreign film nomination they are then ineligible for the popular film nomination. or maybe any film with 100+ million grosses or releases with projected 100m grosses (based on a predefined formula), as you’d have to allow late year end hits in. if voters are given a list of popular fims and told to pick “the best”, you’d get some high quality stuff.
looking at last year of 100m+ grosses, my guess is that we’d have gotten the below under such a category:
> Wonder Woman (terrific)
> Logan (ehh)
> The Greatest Showman (great)
> War for the Planet of the Ales (amazing)
> and one of: Star Wars (ehh), Split (grt) or Baby Driver (great) or Wonder
All flms with some great craft and arguably better than crap voters default to in the maon category (i.e., Darkest Hour) over genre choices.
the huge worry is you could have voters voting for genre masterpieces here (see Get Out) and ignoring them in Best Picture. that would be a nightmare.
Saw Jurassic World, Solo & Equalizer 2.
The only summer release I saw twice was First Reformed, so that's leading my personal box office contribution.
From that list the only Oscar worthy film for it's production values is "Mission Impossible: Fall Out" It stands up with the best of the recent Bonds- with superior stunts, breath taking cinematography, excellent editing specially in the bath room fight scene.
huh -- the greatest showman would have never been honored. i dont think. It didn't pick up steam fast enough. People were actually shocked by its long haul success.
My first thought was that it was going to be a sort of unofficial division of studio and independent films, but even that would be really bad. Even if that’s what they were trying to do, they gave the special category to the wrong end of the spectrum, since they would be much more justified in creating a category for independent films under a certain budget. Not that I’d necessarily be in favor of that either (that’s what the Independent Spirit Awards are for—or at least what they’re supposed to be for), but I’m just still trying to wrap my head around the reason for this category.
The real truth is that they were probably afraid of having another #OscarsSoWhite controversy if Black Panther didn’t get a Best Picture nomination, but of course putting it in its own separate category leaves it open to a lot of criticism too. Just a bad idea all around.
No, fuck this stupid idea of a stupid award that wasn't needed. The day the Oscars decide to give an award to a no-talent hack like Michael Bay is the day you just put the fucking award in the fucking trash.
Make this an Audience Award (with online voting) so we can pretend it doesn't exist.
I despise the Best Popular Film category (or whatever they're going to call it) but I would swallow that pandering decision in a second if the tradeoff was keeping all the tech categories on the live telecast.
SEARCHING IS BRILLINANt
Ok this is probably not the post to comment on, but Searching was just so good everyone needs to see it. More twisty than the Handmaiden, but also an intense exploration of human relationships and emotions. John Cho is amazing.
And the computer thing is not a gimmick - it’s so crucial to the tone of the film. Wow.
I saw 7 of the 10, four of them twice, and 2 of the runner ups. My favourites were “Ocean’s Eight” and “The Wasp and Antman”.
Change the broadcasting network for the Academy Awards show. Pick a network that is happy for the show to run just as long as it likes, just like they do for sporting events. Pick a network that will also televise the evening of honorary awards, because we love those well deserved and unrushed tributes.
I've seen all of them with the exception of Hotel Transylvania and Equalizer. My top two is Ant Man and Crazy Rich Asians, but appreciated a lot of things from most of the others.
But just seeing beyaccount's comments... and YES. I continue to beat the drum hard for that movie. SEARCHING is great y'all. John Cho is VERY good and the movie really is an experience to the very end.
I actually enjoyed Deadpool 2 but I didn't see the first one so maybe I had different expectations.
Proud to say I have not seen a single one of the top 10 movies, nor do I care to. Just no interest in empty blockbusters anymore (I'm sure The Incredibles 2 is good for what it is, but I'm also weary of the tropes inevitably found in all animated feature films these days). I did see Crazy Rich Asians but honestly, was not that impressed, good as it was to see an all Asian cast.
I was happy to go see films like BlacKkKlansman, Eight Grade, Won't You Be My Neighbor, Searching, Heredity, etc, etc.
If this award is an inevitability, I would love to see a non-Disney film take it, because it appears that it was pushed on the Academy by ABC.
So go Crazy Rich Asians.
How was Deadpool 2 bad.
I'm a bit sad about this popular Oscar thing because:
1. I don't think it's a change that will last. It seems like a blip on the radar that's doomed, much like the "Best Overall Actor/Actress" categories at the emmys, and
2. It's having a big impact on the way we frame the race now. Alot of people are talking about Crazy Rich Asians as a contender for the best popular award, rather than Best Picture. I suspect in previous years, we'd have started hearing rumblings for that.
I know this is way too late for anyone to see this, but I think Nathaniel is on to something. If we MUST have a Popular Movie award, could we make it for Best Publicity / Marketing or like Best Launch or something? That way they can "honor" the business side, but it's clearly removing the status of something like "Best Picture" for this cockamamie award.