The recession took down a lot of businesses, and movies got hit hard as well. But now with the economy slowly bouncing back, movies are breaking records at the box office, thanks to the help of superheroes.
It’s not rocket science to figure out that superheroes are big money generators, but thanks to The Avengers, they’re bigger than ever.
It also makes you think, “what a difference a year makes,” because last summer the superhero flicks like Captain America and the Green Lantern didn’t deliver the big bucks, and showed the genre was definitely in a slump.
However, as Variety tells us, “2012 is looking like the highest-grossing year ever domestically.” Yes, it may be tough to keep up the momentum as Andrew Stewart writes, but “holding onto the record is a solid possibility with The Dark Knight Rises and the final Twilight installment yet to open.”
The two big winners that pushed it all over the top of course were The Avengers, which has made $606.5 million in the States, $1.45 billion worldwide, and The Hunger Games, which cruised past $400 million domestically.
That definitely picks up the slack where there were 9 weekends this year that were lagging at the b.o., and as Stewart also tells us, “Avengers and Hunger Games grossed almost embarrassingly more than the rest of the year’s hits.”
Also bringing in the bucks is The Amazing Spider-Man, which opened on Tuesday July 3 for the holiday weekend, and The Dark Knight Rises should also be the big b.o. juggernaut to beat. It’s also not surprising to read in Variety that box office for 3D films is “consistently inconsistent” in the States, but 3D is doing well overseas.
Upcoming flicks that should also bring in more dough to make the record include Total Recall and The Bourne Legacy this August, Rise of the Guardians and Life of Pi for Thanksgiving, and The Hobbit, Django Unchained, and the currently untitled hunt for Bin Laden film, just to name a few.
Whether or not this is a sign of a slowly returning economy, entertainment always comes in handy in good times and bad, and while the Avengers and Batman can’t swoop in and solve all our problems, they sure do provide a great escape from them.
