Their total box office might not be the highest, but I just learned on Twitter that Inception and How to Train Your Dragon are the only two films of 2010 to spend ten weeks on the top ten box office chart. That’s a fairly significant bit of news. Repeat viewings, word of mouth and buzz are keeping them afloat. Not a bad record for this vicinity. So what films are the box office champs so far for 2010? (Oscar contenders in bold).
1. Toy Story 3 – $410,171,027
2. Alice in Wonderland – $334,191,110
3. Iron Man 2 – $312,128,345
4. The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – $299,894,595
5. Inception – $283,758,000
6. Despicable Me – $243,828,050
7. Shrek Forever After – $238,395,990
8. How to Train Your Dragon – $217,581,231
9. The Karate Kid – $176,464,965
10. Clash of the Titans – $163,214,888
11. Grown Ups – $160,678,105
12. The Last Airbender – $131,446,626
13. Shutter Island – $128,012,934
14. Salt – $116,451,621
15. The Other Guys – $114,016,000
16. Valentine’s Day – $110,485,654
17. Robin Hood – $105,269,730
18. The Expendables – $100,042,000
19. Date Night – $98,711,404
20. Sex and the City 2 – $95,347,692
The first thing this should show you is that there is no accounting for taste where the American public is concerned. It really is an eye-opener, no? The other thing to notice is how reliable and how popular animated films now are. The reason for this is two-fold. Parents are the among the few demographics willing to shell out money for movies anymore, and two – animated films have become so good everyone wants to see them, even tweens and adults.
Meanwhile, it’s a bit embarrassing that such weak “women’s films” have made it into the top twenty, but refreshing to see that trash is kind of spread out equally among the sexes. Women are indeed a powerful box office force, as it turns out. Twilight, Sex and the City 2 and maybe Date Night are all there because girls or women paid to see them (for better or worse).
