We’ve been hearing about the record breaking box office performance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens ever since the movie’s tickets first went on sale, and how it’s the fastest movie to ever eclipse $1 billion at the box office, etc. etc. But it’s easy to forget how many other movies absolutely killed it at the box office this year:Jurassic World, 50 Shades of Grey, Furious 7, Avengers: Age of Ultron, American Sniper, etc. Well, that cumulative box office take set a new Hollywood record, and it’s money that’d make Richie Rich blush.
Eleven, actually eleven point one…That’s how many billions of dollars was spent at the North American box office in 2015. Hollywood loves to complain about how piracy is killing the movie industry but they just managed to bring in more money in 2015 than any other year throughout history.
The $11 billion mark beats the previous record of $10.9 billion in 2013 and was a significant increase over 2014’s disappointing mark of $10.4 billion.
Some factors in the record:
2015 was the year we saw the opening weekend record broken twice, starting with Jurassic World which opened in June to $208.8 million (ending $652 million total). This was squashed with The Force Awakens with its December opening weekend of $248 million.
Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper set the tone for the year posting the biggest January wide release debut ever with $89.3 million (total box office of $350 million).
Fifty Shades of Grey posted the biggest February opening ever with $85.2 million (total box office of $166.2 million).
Furious 7 led to the biggest April opening weekend ever with $147.2 million (total box office of $353 million).
Avengers: Age of Ultron kicked off the summer with a $191.3 million debut in May, making it one of the top five opening weekends of all time.
The cumulative population of North America is believe to be ~528.7 million people. That means that Hollywood extracted roughly $21 from every single North American citizen…So they can just shut their mouths with the ‘piracy is killing the industry’ bullshit. They’re absolutely killing it, and just had the best year the industry has ever seen.