2009 Box Office Review: Monthly Grosses

2009, as befits the biggest year at the box office, registered a string of monthly records. 2009 broke the monthly records for January, February, April, May, June, October, November, and December. Why? Because of a string of surprise hits, from Paul Blart and Taken to The Hangover and The Proposal to Avatar, which kept the box office on fire from beginning to end, even considering the slump in March and September. The standout here is clearly January, which bested the previous January record by almost $200m.

It remains to be seen whether 2010 can match or surpass the $10.6B tally for 2009, but it is off to a promising start; thanks to Avatar's massive success, 2010 is currently running almost 15% ahead of 2009.

Month	Gross	M-to-M	Cumulative	Est. Adm.
January	$1,014,386,445		$1,014,386,445	138,011,761
February	$769,343,451	-24.16%	$1,783,729,896	104,672,578
March	$651,567,920	-15.31%	$2,435,297,816	88,648,697
April	$695,111,135	6.68%	$3,130,408,951	94,572,944
May	$1,018,427,704	46.51%	$4,148,836,655	138,561,592
June	$1,086,729,130	6.71%	$5,235,565,785	147,854,303
July	$1,161,129,344	6.85%	$6,396,695,129	157,976,781
August	$905,308,293	-22.03%	$7,302,003,422	123,171,196
September	$543,558,798	-39.96%	$7,845,562,220	73,953,578
October	$692,565,754	27.41%	$8,538,127,974	94,226,633
November	$989,594,601	42.89%	$9,527,722,575	134,638,721
December	$1,066,136,750	7.73%	$10,593,859,325	145,052,619
Total	$10,593,859,325			1,441,341,405

Monthly Pie Chart

The two most glaring things here are 1) the low gross for September, traditionally the weakest month, and 2) the generally even distribution between many of the months. It's staggering that January almost matched the summer months and December, which are usually far ahead of the other months.

Month-to-Month Cumulative 2009 Gross

One striking thing about 2009 is that the box office was already halfway past its middle point halfway through the calendar year; usually, the summer period is the time when strong numbers compensate for the weak first half and push the year onward toward the holiday period at the end. Once again, it is due entirely to the strong January and February grosses.

Inglourious Basterds: Second Weekend

Inglourious Basterds had a glorious second weekend. If it doesn't look impressive-it is! Tarantino films often play out like fanboy releases; that is, they attract the core following on opening weekend and then register precipitous drops thereafter. Such, evidently, is not the case with Inglourious Basterds, which suggests that the film is having very strong word of mouth. The $19.3m figure is considerably down from the $20m weekend estimate, but it is more than enough to guarantee a final tally well above $100m. This is a bona fide success for Tarantino and his actors.

And just for the sake of curiosity, and also to provide a proper context for IB's second weekend drop, here are the major 2009 releases and their second weekend drops. IB holds up quite well in this comparison:

The Final Destination & Halloween II (2009) Opening Weekends

The Final Destination registered the 298th largest opening of all time last weekend, while Halloween II is much lower on the chart, at #652. The two films largely avoided the worst case scenario, whereby they affected each other's performances severely, given their essentially similar nature. Clearly, each film must have had an impact on the other, but Halloween II also suffered from the negative reception of its predecessor.

The Final Destination, on the other had, outperformed estimates by a bit, and continued the trend started by its predecessors, where each film's opening increased over the other:

BOM reports that fully 70% of the film's opening figure, or $19m, came from 1,652 sites that showed the film in 3D. This strongly suggests that the newest installment in the franchise benefitted from the 3D gimmick, rather than from faithfulness to the franchise itself. The opening number, either way, is very impressive. It marks the 18th largest opening for an August release, and is also the 28th biggest opening of 2009 (Halloween II ranks at #49):

Note that no less than 7 of the top 50 opening weekends this year were released in August, underscoring just how strong a month this has been.

Labor Day Weekend should help both films, but only a bit. I expect The Final Destination to have by far the lowest multiplier in the franchise, but its large opening ensures that it will be the biggest of the four films. I expect a finish at around $65m at this point.

Top Second Weekends 2009

The August releases have been less impressive performers as regards their second weekends, with none of them approaching the figures for the top tier early summer films such as Up and The Hangover. District 9's second weekend is a bit inflated due to a low Sunday drop estimate, but the film's drop, either way, is quite reasonable all things considered. I do not expect Inglourious Basterds to match it next weekend.

Biggest Opening Weekends of 2009 (Thus Far)

My apologies for the lack of updates recently. Let's get going again.

August 2009 has thus far been very impressive, giving us, in District 9's and Inglourious Basterds' openings, two very strong weekends and in G.I. Joes's and Julie & Julia's two very good figures as well. All four openers rank in the top 40 for this year, with the former 3 in the top 20.

As far as admissions go:

1 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 14,825,348
2 X-Men Origins: Wolverine 11,572,517
3 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 10,589,895
4 Star Trek 10,231,876
5 Fast and Furious 9,653,129
6 Up 9,266,502
7 Monsters Vs. Aliens 8,070,897
8 Watchmen 7,512,154
9 G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra 7,443,952
10 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian 7,370,515
11 Angels & Demons 6,286,281
12 The Hangover 6,119,635
13 Terminator Salvation 5,790,257
14 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs 5,672,161
15 Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail 5,582,442
16 Friday the 13th (2009) 5,519,778
17 Inglourious Basterds 5,115,918
18 District 9 5,082,219
19 The Proposal 4,575,183
20 Hannah Montana The Movie 4,397,889

G.I. Joe: First Weekend

G.I. Joe's opening weekend marks the 73rd biggest opening of all time, and the 9th biggest opening of 2009.

In terms of admissions, the film ranks much lower, landing in the 135th spot on the all-time chart:

And adjusted for inflation:

A Comparative Analysis of the Weekend Performances of the Major 2009 Releases

I know that the huge chart below is bewildering, so allow me to explain.

I have essentially offered up a comparative analysis of the first nine weekends (or less, where applicable) of all the 16 films that have grossed more than $100m this year and were released in January or after. Each film's weekend gross was compared to those of all other films and is given as a percentage.

So, for example, Up's first weekend gross corresponds to 62.5% of Transformers' opening weekend, its second weekend corresponds to 104.29% of Transformers' second weekend. What this means is that Up had so good a hold in its second weekend that it managed to surpass Transformers despite having an opening less than two-thirds that of Transformers'. The films grow wider apart during the third weekend: Up's third weekend is 127% of Transformers 2's (or, conversley, Transformers 2's was 78.71% of Up's).

The point is the essentially the same that I made yesterday, which is that we have had several films this year that have held up remarkably well weekend to weekend. Consider The Hangover, whose opening weekend was only 41.28% of Transformers 2. Its second weekend was 77.49%, and by the third weekend, it had shot past Transformers 2, by having a weekend gross 110.49% of T2's. By the sixth weekend, The Hangover had more than doubled T2's correpsonding weekend gross! As impressively, Paul Blart and Taken each opened with, resp., 29.21% and 22.68% of T2's gross. By the fifth weekend, both were ahead of T2, at 135.19% and 121.41%.

Such figures are, I think, very important to keep in mind when assessing the dynamics at play between various films. 2009 has been an extraordinary year, and we have to account for the relationship between the various films and their performances to gain a proper understanding of it.

Sorry for the size of the font; Blogger resized it for some reason. For a larger version, go here.

(500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer is having a very good run thus far in a small number of theatres. It is, in fact, performing above standard compared to previous films that have been successful in limited run. Check out these two charts. The first is for films in their third weekends that in 1,000 or fewer theatres, and the second is for films that played in fewer than 500 theatres. Days of Summer is in the top 15 in the second chart based on just half the maximum number of theatres:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: Third Weekend

Potter had quite a healthy third weekend, boosted by the IMAX screens it got mid-week last week. The sub-40% drop effectively guarantees that the film will pass $300m, becoming only the second Potter film to do so. Half-Blood Prince registered the 86th best third weekend of all time:

Funny People Opening Weekend

A pretty dismal number, and far below the disappointment threshold for the film (which I'd place at $30m). Put it down to a confusing and generally ineffective advertising campaign and evidently, people's aversion toward less than ridiculous films starring Adam Sandler. There's no use ranking this on the all time chart (where it lands at around #390), and it's quite low on the 2009 opening weekend chart as well:

Also, in terms of estimated admissions: