The 87th Academy Awards ceremony opens today in the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood as it did since 2002. Besides that much has changed in the film industry in the last twelve years.
Here’s one thing: 2002 was the last year, when Hollywood made more money at the US box office than worldwide.
Since then the trend for the 200 top grossing movies per year (that’s what I analyzed based on the data from Boxofficemojo) is clear: Nearly two thirds of Hollywood’s box office revenue come from Asia, Europe and Latin America today. In 2012 China became the world’s second biggest movie market after the US and before Japan.
Since 2012 overall box office revenue is shrinking. In 2014 much more so in the US than worldwide. What does this mean? Fan Bingbing starring in X-Men for example. And perhaps studios will invest big budgets in projects that they think appeal to the largest possible global audience. Meaning animation, sequels, adaptations and perhaps most important: Much more stuff that happens on a clearly fictional earth (superheroes at least if on earth at all), because otherwise parts of a global audience could much more easily feel put off or offended by something.
Box office of 200 top-grossing movies
| year | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Non-US (%) | 45.4 | 47.9 | 48.2 | 50.8 | 51 | 52.9 | 53.2 | 55.7 | 56.1 | 55.9 | 58.6 | 60.9 | 61.1 | 60.5 | 60.9 |
| US (%) | 54.6 | 52.1 | 51.8 | 49.2 | 49 | 47.1 | 46.8 | 44.3 | 43.9 | 44.1 | 41.4 | 39.1 | 38.9 | 39.5 | 39.1 |
| Non-US (Mio $) | 6282.2 | 7348.4 | 8405.10 | 9200.7 | 9753.6 | 9739 | 10201.9 | 11888.618 | 12088.2 | 13646.3 | 14269.7 | 15463.1 | 16911 | 16364.2 | 15728.8 |
| US (Mio $) | 7555.1 | 7988.6 | 9039.8 | 8920.9 | 9194.1 | 9194.1 | 8985.3 | 9466.025 | 9491.4 | 10734.4 | 10100.6 | 9969.2 | 10764.1 | 10714.4 | 10136.5 |
| wordwide box office Top 200 (Mio $) | 13837.4 | 15337.1 | 17444.9 | 18121.7475 | 18947.7 | 18933.1 | 19187.3 | 21354.6 | 21579.6 | 24380.8 | 24370.4 | 25432.3 | 27675.1 | 27078.6 | 25865.3 |
Here is all the data as an ODF. I used Outwit Hub for scraping, Libre Office for analyzing, DensityDesign Lab’s RAW and Affinty Designer for visualizing.
