Warner Bros. Sets a new industry benchmark with its estimated total earnings on the worldwide box office for the year 2009 coming in at a whopping $3.99 billion. The breakdown includes domestic earnings summing up to $2.13 billion far exceeding their previous record from last year of $1.79 billion.
President Jeff Robinov for Warner Bros. expresses his delight saying, “We’re really proud of this achievement and it was only possible through the combined efforts of an incredibly talented group of people.”
Much of the film’s massive income for the year is attributed to their top films earning places in the year’s top 10 earners. Major hits for Warner Bros. this year includes “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”, “The Hangover”, “The Blind Side”, and “Terminator Salvation”. The sixth installment for the famed “Harry Potter” franchise accounts for nearly a quarter of the studio’s earnings brining in about $939 million worldwide. It’s no longer a surprise Warner Bros. Has decided to split the last installment, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” into two.
Meanwhile, the R-rated film based on a Las Vegas bachelor party gone wrong, “The Hangover” was a major surprise in the money-making biz. Riding a strong word of mouth, it unexpectedly produced a whooping $459 million worldwide.
Offering the studio a successful year-end exit is Sandra Bullock’s inspirational sports movie, “The Blind Side”, which garnered $184 million domestically as it charmed audience of all ages.
Though “Terminator Salvation”, the latest remake of the classic sci-fi franchise flopped domestically with only a total gross of $125 million, it packed a punch overseas with $246 million in earnings. The film bounced back and earned big for the studio with an overall total of $372 million.
Similar to the fate of “Terminator Salvation”, other big-budget productions such as “Watchmen” and “Where the Wild Things Are” though not blockbusters managed to turn up big profits or match up the budget allocated by the studio. Other films like “The Final Destination” and “Friday the 13th” also contributed to the total earnings for the studio with solid returns.
Apparently Warner Bros. benefited greatly from releasing more number of major movies for this year compared to any other studio. For instance, Paramount managed to release less than half the number of Warner Bros. Even with only 12 movies for 2009, Paramount had an impressive year-end total of $2.8 billion thanks to their top 10 hit films “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”, “Star Trek”, and “Monsters vs. Aliens”. Sony, Disney, and 20th Century Fox meanwhile managed to surpass the $1 billion domestic mark this year. However Sony had failed to land a film on the top 10 hit list for 2009.
