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2009 Summer Box Office Breaks Records

Variety reports that this past summer was the biggest ever at the worldwide box office. Overall box office receipts were $10 billion. Overseas box office numbers were a whopping $5.8 billion, which is 7% higher than the summer of 2007 which was a huge winner for the studios.

Domestic box office revenues officially surpassed 2007 levels on Wednesday, when ticket sales reached $4.20 billion vs. $4.16 billion two years ago. That's a 1% uptick, but with Labor Day weekend still to come, that gain will increase. Studios say the increase at the foreign B.O. is especially noteworthy considering that exchange rates no longer favor American companies, as they did before last fall's economic collapse.

Heading into the season, no one in Hollywood would have guessed that 20th Century Fox's 3-D toon "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" would finish the summer No. 1 at the international B.O., cuming some $640 million through Aug. 31 and even besting "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" ($613 million). "I think we can safely say that 3-D is here to stay. I don't think you can have numbers like this if it was just a fad," said Fox co-prexy of international distribution Paul Hanneman. "No one anticipated that we would get to these levels."

"Ice Age: The Meltdown," the last installment in the franchise, grossed $460.1 million overseas, $180 million less than "Dawn of the Dinosaurs."

Up, which is also in 3-D has already grossed $156.6 million to date and G-Force has already made $67 million overseas. The biggest winner of the summer was Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince which made $907.7 million worldwide.

Posted on September 4, 2009

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