The Top 10 Movies of 2021 at the Global Box Office

The global box office recovery in 2021 was once again led by China. Local Chinese blockbusters represent three of the year’s top six highest-grossing films, reflecting its status as the world’s top cinema market. As the year came to a close, China stood as the highest-grossing territory for half of the top ten films at the global box office.  While China can mean the difference between a domestic disappointment and a global hit for Hollywood films, studios have learned not to stake their fortunes on China alone. Several of the year’s top Hollywood titles, including Spider-Man: No Way Home, the first billion-dollar hit since 2019, cracked the global top ten without counting on a Chinese release.  As China’s role in the global film industry continues to grow, so does the threat of piracy. In a year marked by experimentation on release models and shortened theatrical...

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The Top 10 Movies of 2021 at the Domestic Box Office

2021 was a tumultuous year for the domestic box office that began with serious doubts over the cinema sector’s commercial viability and ended with the second biggest opening weekend of all-time. Studios took the reset provided by the Covid-19 pandemic to test new release models and shorter theatrical windows. Results of that experimentation were mixed. Of the ten highest-grossing films in North America in 2021, only one (Black Widow) was released simultaneously on streaming. Warner Bros., which committed its entire 2021 theatrical slate to open day-and-date on HBO Max, was the only major studio to be absent from the year’s ten highest-earners entirely—despite releasing 20 new films to cinemas.  The domestic box office began to recover in earnest with the release of Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II, the only film on this list released in the first half of the year,...

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Year in Review: The Biggest Stories, Surprises, and Disappointments of 2021 at the Box Office

Meme stocks, failed mergers, and a Billion dollar earner—our look back at a tumultuous recovery year for exhibition. For a detailed recap of 2021 for the global exhibition industry, click here to access our in-depth report. Listen to our full analysis of 2021 at the box office in this week’s special year-end episode of The Boxoffice Podcast THE BIGGEST STORIES OF THE YEAR FOR DOMESTIC THEATRICAL EXHIBITION SVOG  An economic lifeline for cinemas, the federal government’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant (SVOG) program helped movie theaters in the United States stay in business through the hardest months of the pandemic. Cinemas’ inclusion in the Save Our Stages act of SVOG wasn’t a guarantee, requiring lobbying efforts by the National Association of Theatre Owners to ensure movie theaters could benefit from the program. AMC’s Retail Investors Publicly-traded companies...

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Russia’s Karo Announces the Opening of Six New Multiplexes

Russian cinema chain Karo has announced the opening of six new theaters in the coming weeks. The Neva, Rassvet, Mars, and Vysota theaters, all in Moscow, will open December 30, with theaters in Budapest, Hungary and Sophia, Bulgaria to follow in January of 2022. Each of the new theaters will boast amenities designed to maximize customer satisfaction, including full recliner seating, automated ticketing systems, and “u-choose” food and beverage stations. In addition to multiplex offerings, the cinemas will screen more niche fare through the chain’s KINO.Art project. Private cinema rentals—dubbed “Hall Keys”—will be made available, building on the success the chain has had with such rentals during the Covid era. Between December 1, 2020 and December 1, 2021, Karo hosted more than 500 private rental events. Says Karo Group Executive Chairman and CEO Paul Heth of the new...

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Spider-Man: No Way Home Becomes Highest-Grossing Film in Sony Pictures’ History

Days after becoming the first film of the pandemic era to cross the $1 billion mark at the box office, Spider-Man: No Way Home has broken yet another record, becoming the highest-grossing film in Sony Pictures’ history. Said record was previously held by 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home, which grossed $1.13B worldwide. Currently, No Way Home‘s global cume stands at $1.16M, split across $516.4 domestic and $644.9 internationally. The film’s top international markets, as of Tuesday the 28th, were the United Kingdom ($76.6M), Mexico ($57.9M), South Korea ($43.2M), France ($42.1M), and Australia ($35.9M). Notably absent from the list is China, where Spider-Man: No Way Home has not yet been released, making the film’s record-breaking haul all the more impressive. (Far From Home did screen in China, to the tune of $198.9M over its run.) Further potentially limiting factors...

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New Year’s Weekend Box Office Forecast: Spider-Man: No Way Home Targets 3rd #1 Frame as Omicron Caution Continues through Holiday Stretch

The movie industry will say goodbye to 2021 and welcome 2022 with Sony and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: No Way Home ringing in the new year atop the box office for a third straight weekend as holdovers set the pace of the coming holiday frame. The web-slinging phenom has amassed $516.4 million domestically and $1.16 billion worldwide through Tuesday, December 28, making it Sony’s highest grossing film in history on both counts. With that daily tally, No Way Home became the third fastest of all-time to surpass the $500 million domestic threshold — doing so in 12 days. Only Avengers: Endgame (8) and Star Wars: The Force Awakens (10) bested it. Although last weekend’s haul came in on the lower end of expectations, No Way Home remains the driving force of the market. Christmas Eve softened initial weekend performance before an expected Christmas Day bump, but continued concerns...

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Pedro Almodóvar on the Importance of Cinema’s Recovery from the Pandemic

In conjunction with the release of his film Parallel Mothers, Pedro Almodóvar speaks to Boxoffice Pro on his feelings about the worldwide cinematic recovery. Read Daniel Loria’s conversation with Almodóvar, reprinted from our Centennial issue, here. Spanish cinemas are still not out of the crisis, but it looks like we’ve turned a corner with the release of Dune and the James Bond movie [No Time to Die]. The situation should improve now that cinemas are reopening at full capacity. To be perfectly honest, it’s not like there were a lot of very interesting movies being released until recently, but more are coming out now. We opened Parallel Mothers in Spain in October and finished well, under the circumstances, in third place behind James Bond and The Addams Family 2. The film is doing well, but we are naturally very concerned since things are not back to the way they were...

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SPECIALTY BOX OFFICE: Licorice Pizza Cracks Top 10 in Expansion, Parallel Mothers Scores Second-Best PSA of Christmas Weekend

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (United Artists Releasing) expanded to 786 runs in 133 markets in North America on Christmas Day. The film originally opened in platform release over the Thanksgiving holiday, holding exclusive engagements in four 70mm auditoriums in New York and Los Angeles over its first four weeks in the market. With the expansion, the film earned $1.22 million on Saturday and dropped only 10 percent on Sunday to finish the three-day weekend with a $2.32 million haul. Licorice Pizza has now earned a total of $3.66 million in North America. The majority (66%) of its audience throughout the North American release has been between the ages of 18 and 34. Reliance Entertainment scored one of the highest per-screen averages of the three-day frame with the Hindi title ‘83. The sports movie opened on 481 screens in North America, grossing $1.76 million...

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WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Spider-Man: No Way Home Swings to $81.5M 3-Day/$138.7M 5-Day, Crosses $1B Worldwide; Sing 2 ($23.8M/$41M) Tops The Matrix Resurrections ($12M/$22.5M) for 2nd Place

Amid the most crowded theatrical marketplace of new releases since the start of the pandemic, Sony/Marvel’s record-breaking Spider-Man: No Way Home predictably remained the top draw at the box office over the Christmas weekend, pulling in an estimated $81.5M over the three-day and $138.7M over the five-day in its sophomore frame. The superhero blockbuster towered over all newcomers, though the Universal sequel Sing 2 proved a popular alternative option for families. Mixed results were in store for the remainder of this weekend’s crop of fresh releases, which included the long-awaited reboot The Matrix Resurrections, action prequel The King’s Man, faith-based football biopic American Underdog and fact-based drama A Journal for Jordan. Meanwhile, United Artists expanded the arthouse hit Licorice Pizza to 786 locations. Hovering over the packed lineup was the rising threat...

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