The success of 2013’s box office looked like a big question mark during the first half of the year. Things looked more optimistic during the summer but 2013 all ended on a positive note.
You may remember when I looked at the first six months of 2013, I didn’t think 2012’s record would be broken. The summer of 2013 however provided a big boost to the year with possibly the highest-grossing movie summer ever. Even with all the bad news that made headlines, it showed the good news that was being overlooked. Anyways here’s how the rest of 2013 fared off.
September began with The Butler and We’re The Millers still going strong and a big plus from the teen girls demograph with the One Direction concert movie. Then comes what’s known in the movie year as the September slump. The sizzle of wowing people to the cinemas starts cooling down now that everyone’s done their vacations and heading either back to work or back to school. This September did have attractions to the cinema but it wasn’t as attractive as last year.
The first post-Labor Day weekend in September began with Riddick on top. It was the only big debut that weekend. The following weekend got better with Insidious Chapter 2 opening at $40.3 million: the second-highest September opening weekend ever. The following weekend also had excitement, albeit comparatively tame, with Prisoners on top. The final weekend of September had Cloudy with A Chance Of Meatballs 2 on top with $34 million: the fourth-highest September opening weekend ever. At the end of the month, this September didn’t fare so hot. It’s total of $461.8 million was almost $100 million lower than last September and was the lowest-grossing September since 2004.
Despite September’s let-down, October was a huge pick-me-up. You can thank most of it to a certain movie called Gravity. Right in the first weekend, you knew Gravity would be a major hit as it opened at $55.8 million: the highest-grossing October opening weekend ever. Gravity reigned on top for three weeks despite the challenges of Captain Phillips and the remake of Carrie. It would take Jackass Presents Bad Grandpa to dethrone Gravity from the top spot in the last weekend October 2013. At the end, October 2013 outgrossed October 2012 by about $70 million. So things were getting back on track. This was not however the highest-grossing October ever. 2004 is by miles with $809 million.
November is normally when the box office picks up again and consists of openings and total grosses that can rival the summer. November actually began calmly with good but modest opening weekends for Ender’s Game, Last Vegas and Free Bird. Things got more exciting when Thor: The Dark world opened the following weekend with $85.7 million. It stayed on top for another weekend as the debut of The Best Man Holiday wasn’t enough to dethrone it from the top. However it would be the following weekend that would be buzzing as it would be the opening of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. It opened with $158.1 million: the sixth-highest opening weekend ever and the highest-ever November opening weekend. Catching Fire continued strongly in the last weekend of November leading into December with a total gross of almost $280 million at the end of November. November 2013 ended with a total gross of $1.398 billion. It was more than $140 million less than November 2012 but it was still enough to be the second-highest November gross ever.
December began not with a strong opening on top but a strong steady growth by Frozen on top. Frozen was actually second to Catching Fire by almost $7 million at the November 30th/December 1st weekend. However a strong steady growth for Frozen that was able to capitalize on Catching Fire’s fade found itself stealing the top spot by $5.5 million. Weak debuts from other movies sure helped that week too. However it was the following weekend that promised excitement as the latest Hobbit movie, The Desolation Of Smaug, was going to debut. A strong debut it was with $73.6 million that weekend–the fourth-highest December opening weekend ever– but it was comparatively paltry to the debut of last year’s Hobbit movie: $11 million shy to be exact. Smaug’s buzz was strong enough even to conquer the buzz of the highly-anticipated opening of Anchorman 2 by $5.5 million. The Christmas weekend of the 27th to the 29th made for a low overall gross that weekend. Weather disasters and catastrophes nationwide had a lot to do with it. That weekend saw the Top 4 movies being previously released movies with only The Wolf Of Wall Street having the strongest opening weekend with a #5 debut. The surprise of it all is that December 2013 only failed to outgross December 2012 but just $4 million. The weather problems didn’t hurt the box office that bad.
The big surprise of the box office was for the whole year. In 2013, there were only four months where its total gross outgrossed the monthly totals of 2012. At the end of it all, the whole year of 2013 was a record-breaking year with a total gross of $10.92 billion. That breaks 2012’s record by almost $85 million, roughly 0.8%. It does seem like a small increase but it just goes to show it’s not completely about spectacular opening numbers. The annual box office is an endurance game too. The year’s record-breaking gross is an optimistic statistic since the box office was constantly feeling the pinch of sites like Netflix and the increasing video game industry. This also makes it the fifth straight year where the total annual gross was more than $10 billion dollars showing that despite its rivalries in the entertainment industry, box office movies still remain a strong and healthy business.
Leading into 2014, there are the questions of whether it will break 2013’s total record and even become the first movie year to gross over $11 billion. I don’t think we should worry about that too much especially knowing that 2001 was the first ever year to break past the $8 billion barrier. Instead let 2014 play itself out and hope that it delivers for everyone.
WORKS CITED:
“Yearly Box Office Chart” BoxOfficeMojo.com. 2013. Box Office Mojo. Owned by IMDB.com. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/
“Monthly Box Office Chart” BoxOfficeMojo.com. 2013. Box Office Mojo. Owned by IMDB.com. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/monthly/
“Weekend Box Office Chart” BoxOfficeMojo.com. 2013. Box Office Mojo. Owned by IMDB.com. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/
Jon The Blogcentric 