Box Office Successes and Failures

It's been a pretty slow year for the film industry this year, particularly after last years massive box office success, Avatar took over seven hundred million pounds despite the ambiguous production values rumoured to be in the region of two hundred and eighty million dollars. It's going to be a very difficult task to even compete with Cameron's grossing triumph but Hollywood had a bloody good go at giving Avatar a run for it's money.

 

 HARRY POTTER STARS: DANIEL RADCLIFFE, EMMA WATSON, RUPERT GRINT.

Surprisingly, the seventh installment of Harry Potter failed to reclaim the highest grossing crown like it's five preceding films, despite the lack of real rivals, with the possible exception of the third Toy Story which was yesterday announced as the highest grossing film of 2010. While in the past, Potter has had to contend with films such as Pirates of the Caribeen, the Dark Knight, Lord of the Rings and of course Avatar, this year has been a rather low key period for Hollywood. With animated films taking centre stage with Toy Story 3, the final Shrek movie, the unexpectedly successful Despicable Me and other 3D releases such as Megamind and How To Train Your Dragon dominating our cinemas, Potter was expected to take back the number one spot having last achieved it back in 2001 with the Sorcerer's Stone.

But it wasn't meant to be. 

Another surprise was the success of Christopher Nolan's Inception starring Leonardo DiCaprio, taking almost nine hundred million at the book office just infront of Shrek Forever After which came in at number five with just over seven hundred million. Alice in Wonderland didn't do as well as Disney would of liked, coming in with just over three hundred and thirty million and as it cost over two hundred million to make excluding publicity expenses, isn't as much as they would of been anticipating I'm sure.

But perhaps the biggest disappointments were from some of last years most bankable actors. Johnny Depp who came in at number two last year may have had reasonable success with Alice of the Wonderland in March, but his Winter blockbuster The Tourist alongside Hollywood's most reliable female Angelina Jolie, will be lucky to make half of what was spent on it. Matt Damon also suffered this year, Green Zone which was released in March made only a third of the films production costs while his October movie, Hereafter should do slightly better as the film only cost Warner Brothers fifty million.

But of course the biggest success of 2010, is Toy Story 3. The final part of Pixar's animated adventure raked in just over a billion dollars, which is about six hundred and eighty million to us Brits and the film has been tipped to pick up Best Animated Picture at the Academy Awards while some have even suggested it deserves to walk away with the Best Picture. They're is always a first for everything! 

And it certainly was a good year for animated films, Despicable Me, with $539m came in eighth and How to Train Your Dragon with $493m rounded off the top ten. Other animated flicks such as Megamind and Tangled have also done well, despite being released around the time of the seventh Harry Potter and the slightly more successful Despicable Me which was boosted by an all star cast including Steve Carrell, Julie Andrews, Jason Segel and Russell Brand.

Alice in Wonderland managed to clinch the second spot in the list just tilting over the billion pound mark with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One coming in at number three. Whether or not the two deserved to even be in the top three is another matter. The other films to make the top 10 were vampire romance Twilight Eclipse, in sixth spot with $693m, Robert Downey Jnr. as the Ironman in his superhero sequel Iron Man 2, came in seventh place with $622m, and fantasy remake Clash of the Titans, just managed to scrap into the top ten, coming in at nine with just shy of half a billion.