#2009 HIGHEST GROSSING MOVIES MOVIE#

Note that, of the directors of these nine flops, four were either Academy Award winners (Robert Zemeckis, Ron Howard) or Oscar nominees (Michael Mann, Spike Jonze), whereas Cameron is the only Oscar winner among directors of the top 10 grossers. Joe, Angels & Demons, Watchmen, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Public Enemies, Land of the Lost and Where the Wild Things Are. The underperforming nine: Terminator Salvation, Disney's A Christmas Carol, G.I. If they didn't in 2009, they made our top-of-the-flops list. Still, it's a Hollywood rule that movies with $100 millionР’вЂ“plus budgets should at least earn as much at the domestic box office as they cost to produce. That trend is already evident: the industry earned its big boodle in 2009 while making about 20% fewer films.Р”Р„nd which were the big losers? Expensive duds are harder to calibrate for example, a film may disappoint Stateside and be a hit abroad.

The worldwide popularity of these Р“Сber-movies also suggests that smaller pictures will have a harder time getting made. Studio moguls are always looking for ways to tamp down runaway budgets, but they may have to acknowledge that money on the screen equals money in the bank often enough to take the risk. It happens Р’вЂ” or was it inevitable? Р’вЂ” that the top three winners were also the year's most expensive movies, costing between $210 million and $250 million, not including the cost of bringing them to market (usually another $100 million or so). Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, $196.6 million (See what we learned from a decade at the movies.) The Twilight Saga: New Moon, $284.6 million*Р”РЋ0. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, $302 millionР”В¤. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, $402.1 millionР”Сћ. 31, and an asterisk denoting those pictures still playing in theaters:Р”РЋ.

Here are the top 10 films released in 2009, with the tally ending Dec. Ticket prices keep rising and with Avatar charging road-show fees and getting away with it, look for Hollywood to keep following the Starbucks model: persuade the customers that your product is premium, and charge them for the privilege of buying it. Inflation explains the variance between dollars earned and tickets sold. The number of tickets sold, 1.474 billion, was the highest of the past five years Р’вЂ” though lower than sales in any year from 2001 to 2004, when the big franchises ( Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, Shrek, Harry Potter) were really cooking. For the first time ever, the annual box-office total exceeded $10 billion ($10.5851, to get into pi calculations), outpacing the previous record, in 2008, by nearly 10%. No matter what else Americans skimped on when they got slammed by the Great Recession, they didn't stop going to the movies. This may not have been the time to expand the Oscar category for Best Picture from five films to 10, but studio bosses will say it was a very good year.

#2009 HIGHEST GROSSING MOVIES MOVIE#

But in 2009's cosmic economic battle of extraterrestrials Р’вЂ” the Autobots and Decepticons of the Michael Bay movie and the Pandorans of Cameron's Р’вЂ” the blue people will soon triumph. It has already passed the billion-dollar mark at the worldwide box office ( Transformers 2 topped out at $800 million), quickly becoming the fourth highest-grossing all-timer after the second Pirates of the Caribbean film, the final Lord of the Rings installment and, at the top, a little love story called Titanic. Then, as if not just in response but rebuttal to this mass-produced entertainment, came Avatar, the James Cameron sci-fi spectacular that has earned $350 million in its first 2Р’Р… weeks and, in about the same time, should overtake the Transformers sequel. In the early summer, Transformers 2 steamrollered all competition on its way to becoming only the ninth movie in history to earn $400 million at the domestic box office. That sentence will self-destruct some time this month.

Follow the North American box office, the top-grossing movie released in 2009 was Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

2009 highest grossing movies