April

2012 Box Office: March and April’s Continued Success

Jon The Blogcentric3 Comments

Another two months have passed and the box office has enjoyed a continued increase this year, if not completely consistent. If there’s one message to be made so far,  it’s that Hollywood’s doing all the right stuff these past four months of 2012.

As many of my followers already know, I’ve been paying close attention to the total box office results this year. I started doing it every year only in recent years. This year I’m paying special attention this year because you can bet Hollywood is hoping for its biggest year ever. Also you can bet Hollywood is looking to rebound after the disappointments of the last two years as noted in my article about 2011’s Box Office.

2012 shows signs that the box office is looking up for sure. I made previous notes in my focus on January and February of the reasons for Hollywood to be optimistic. Its total gross was over $320 million more than last year’s and the biggest January/February total gross ever. March and April gave box office stats impressive enough to keep Hollywood smiling too.

The first weekend of March 2012 showed continuing promise for the box office as Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax opened with $82.8 million. It was even strong enough to keep the heavily-promoted John Carter from debuting at #1. The following week saw 21 Jump Street debut with a strong opening. However nothing could compare in March for the opening of the heavily-anticipated The Hunger Games. Its opening weekend of $152.5 million raked as the third-highest opening weekend of all time at the time and its buzz was even able to outdo the openings of Wrath Of The Titans and Mirror Mirror the following weekend. The end result for March 2012 was $1.071 billion: the highest-grossing March ever; only the second March ever to gross more than a billion dollars and $412 million more than the gross of March 2011.

April didn’t have as strong buzz as last year this time around. The month began with the continuing endurance of The Hunger Games keeping it at #1 during the first two weekends of April. Its box office domination even warded off debuts like American Reunion, Titanic 3D, The Three Stooges and The Cabin In The Woods. It wouldn’t be replaced as the #1 movie in North America until Think Like A Man opened. Think still continued as the #1 movie the following weekend, even outdoing the debuts of The Pirates! Band Of Misfits and The Five-Year Engagement. Nevertheless Think Like A Man’s opening weekend was only a humble $33.6 million.

The lack of sizzle of April’s openers led to a roughly estimated total gross of $725 million: $200 million less than last year’s record-setting April. Nevertheless April was only a minor box office setback as the box office of those four months amassed a total roughly over $500 million more than last year. So 2012 remains on pace for being the highest-grossing year ever.

As we head into May, we already know the box office is getting more boost as the very first weekend saw the release of The Avengers which not only broke the box office record for opening weekend but set a box office milestone too. Its record-setting opening weekend of $207 million made it the first-ever $200 million weekend! May promises more box office excitement with The Dictator, Battleship and Men In Black III. The rest of the summer is also full of buzz with Battlefield America, Madagascar 3, Disney/Pixar’s Brave, and the latest movies in the Spiderman, Jason Bourne, Expendibles and Batman franchises.

2012 is continuing on another impressive year and the buzz in the following months should continue long enough to make this a record-setting year.

WORK CITED:

“Monthly Box Office Chart” BoxOfficeMojo.com. 2011. Box Office Mojo. Owned by IMDB.com. <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/monthly/>

2011 Movie Year Picking Up Slowly But Surely

Jon The BlogcentricLeave a comment

I’m sure a lot of you remember back in March of this year, I posted a story about how dismal the first two months of the box office were looking. Yeah, they kind of had me nervous of what was yet to come for the whole year.

The month of March didn’t look too optimistic either. Mind you it is hard to challenge the previous year’s March when it had Alice In Wonderland opening, and that had the sixth-biggest opening weekend gross ever at the time. Basically March 2011 was another yawner of a month with it failing to outgross March 2010. The box office for the first three months was so bland, I’m glad Box Office Mojo didn’t write up a summary of March. Otherwise I would have had an article titled Diary Of A Wimpy Box Office.

With that dismality, I was expecting April to be yet another ho-hum movie month in 2011. Actually things looked up. According to Box Office Mojo, this April was the highest-grossing April ever at $791 million, outgrossing last year’s April by 5%. This was also the first year since 1984 in which April’s box office tally was bigger than any of its preceding months. A lot of it can be attributed to strong showings from Hop, Insidious, Source Code and Rio. However it was a case of save the best for last when Fast Five opened with $86.2 million, the highest-ever April opening weekend. This April also sold the third-most movie tickets of any April.  And to think that most of the April movies weren’t in 3D.

The month of April did a lot to lift some spirits who were paying close attention to the box office. Despite April’s strong showing, the year-to-date is still struggling.The box office total from January to April is nearly $2.9 billion, the lowest since 2008. Total ticket sales up to April were also the lowest since 1995.

As for May, the biggest opener came from Thor and it continues to hold the #1 spot this weekend. The May tally so far is just 5% less than that of May 2010 to date. Nevertheless there’s a lot to anticipate, like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tide this weekend. The following weekend, The Hangover Part 2 and Kung Fu Panda 2 will open, so there’s still lots to wait for.

Interesting about the box office. Sometimes the most intense competition isn’t necessarily movie vs. movie or star vs. star or even studio vs. studio. Sometimes it’s movie weekend vs. last year’s movie weekend or movie month vs. last year’s movie month. Or even movie year vs. previous movie year. The competition doesn’t end, does it?

WORKS CITED:

BOX OFFICE MOJO: April Sees Box Office Rebound. BoxOfficeMojo.com Author: Brandon Gray. May 4, 2011. Imdb.com. <http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3154&p=.htm>