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MCKillswitch123

Box Office Stories of 2016

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Decided to dig this place back to the living for my top 9 best box office stories of 2016. Why 9? Cause I couldn't think of a 10th one.

 

Enjoy :)

 

1 - Deadpool, motherfuckers - My #1 box office story in the original post, and still my #1 story of the whole year. Not just a mere breakout hit, but a total game changer in the way that studios will percieve major releases from this point onwards. Hollywood is no longer afraid of a potential alienation of audiences through an R-rating, as it has been proved that people will watch anything - as long as it's good, fresh, and exciting. Fox is now taking chances w/their X-verse after Deadpool, w/Logan and the TV show Legion looking quite different than other superhero properties, alongside the promise of other X-Men events like X-Force and The New Mutants following suit. The 2nd highest grossing R-rated movie ever DOM and the #1 biggest worldwide, despite being based on a somewhat obscure Marvel character, starring Ryan Reynolds whose BO track record was pretty bad, and being released in February. The biggest shock at least since Jurassic World's 200M OW. The event that made me a true, unapologetic aficionado of following the box office.

 

2 - Mickey Mouse splooges all over the BO - There have been big BO years for studios throughout the years, like a WB 2010, or Universal 2015. But nothing can quite compare to what Walt Disney Studios accomplished last year. Breaking all sorts of studio records - biggest yearly DOM income, biggest yearly WW income, most 300M+ DOM hits in a single year, most 1B+ WW hits in a single year... madness. Safe to say that the Lucasfilm, Marvel and Pixar trifecta giftwrapped Disney the year all by itself through Rogue One, Civil War, and Finding Dory, but on top of those, two other megahits in Zootopia and The Jungle Book, two mid-sized hits in Moana and Doctor Strange, and some not quite as commercially successful but still (mostly) well recieved films that added to their total [Pete's Dragon, BFG, Finest Hours, Alice 2 (ugh)] will make this a year that goes down in history, from both a quality and quantity standpoint. The House of Mouse has never looked better.

 

3 - All good things come animated - By far the biggest year in the genre's history, animation was on steroids in 2016, and gave the superhero genre a run for its money for most valuable genre in cinema today. Asides from the aforementioned big Disney hits in Finding Dory, Zootopia, and Moana (the former becoming the #1 animated film ever DOM, and the history-maker that became, alongside the middle one, the 1st pair of animated films from a single year to join the billion dollar club), Illumination stepped up immensely, as The Secret Life Of Pets became the biggest non-Disney original animation ever, and Sing also pulled super respectable results; DreamWorks came back to some prominence through Trolls and Kung Fu Panda 3; Sony had cartoon punches of their own w/a rare video game movie hit in Angry Birds and the R-rated sensation Sausage Party; WB brought along a profitable and potential cult classic little wonder in Storks; and, although a money loser for Laika, Kubo And The Two Strings enamored audiences and at least got away w/it through multiple Oscar nominations.


4 - The rise(ish) and fall(ish) of the DC Extended Universe - By no means was WB's attempt at rising to prominence a fully funcional DC cinematic universe a failed one. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Suicide Squad, two of, if not the, most anticipated movies of 2016 were both highly successful and profitable, both over 300M DOM and at 890-745M WW respectively. And we eagerly anticipate this year's Wonder Woman and Justice League outings. However, those two movies had remarkably similar patterns that forced this would-be-may-be Marvel competitor into a small panic: both had really big opening weekends, unsatisfying WOM, and considerable (to say the least) drops in its 1st weekend holds (though Suicide Squad managed to hold on from a certain point onwards). Regardless, despite the odd rollercoaster of emotions they provided, they did still spawn numbers that any other movie would probably envy.

 

5 - A mermaid w/an eyelid fold - 2016 was a remarkable year for China's box office. Four American movies crossed 1 billion yens in the Middle Kingdom (Civil War, Zootopia, Warcraft, and Kung Fu Panda 3), a major co-production between the USA and China (The Great Wall) made an audible move, the local business grew bigger than ever, and the country is slowly growing to become a just as big influence in a movie's global success than the US. One particular movie, however, stood out. The Mermaid, directed by Stephen Chow, came out during Chinese New Year, and not only completely eviscerated all competition, but became the 1st film ever to reach 500 million dollars in a single territory OUTSIDE of the US. That was a scary tidbit of news if you're putting your stock into Americans continuing to monopolize big budget filmmaking for many years to come.

 

6 - Bombs away - For every big success, there's a big, big bomb. And Good Lord, did the number of bombs in 2016 feel appropriate enough, given the shithole in which the world jumped into during the rather terriblideous year it was. Alice Through The Looking Glass, Independence Day: Resurgence, TMNT: Out Of The Shadows, The BFG, Ben-Hur, Gods Of Egypt, Zoolander 2, the list goes on and on. Goodness. Not ALL of them were terrible movies, admitedly (see Deepwater Horizon or The Nice Guys, for example), but still, YIKES.

 

7 - Happy dreams about scary movies - Besides animated movies, the other genre that saw a massive rebirth in 2016 was good ol' fashioned horror, baby. Admitedly, horror movies were always profitable due to their low budgets, but 2016's were more than just profitable. Particularly, a quadfecta of Summer releases showed itself as note-worthy. The Conjuring 2 became one of the rare horror sequels to outgross the original in WW numbers (not quite DOM but still not too far). And, asides from being positively recieved, Lights Out, The Shallows, and Don't Breathe all pulled the tough tasks of bringing in strong numbers for original horror, including 100M+ WW for all three of them. A24's The Witch was also successful, as was the surprisingly well recieved Ouija prequel Origin Of Evil. And, despite your meh fare here and there, this was, unquestionably, a banner year for horror.

 

8 - Orcs vs. Humans 2: Americans vs. Overseas...ers - A lot of people thought that 2016 was gonna be the year in which the video game movie would rise ala superheroes. A lot of people were kinda wrong. Even despite a few of them turning money in, none of them were big hits by any stretch of imagination (not even Angry Birds), and all of them were poorly recieved. The curse is still alive. One particular film, however, was a very curious case. While in the US, Warcraft grossed less than 50M and audiences seemed completely apathetic towards the property, the movie performed like a massive superhero blockbuster OS... that just happened to be ridiculously frontloaded to the point where Harry Potter sighed in relief that he didn't have it THAT bad in terms of drops. Nevertheless, Warcraft grossed an astonishing almost 400M from OS alone, and one has to wonder what would've happened if the movie was actually good and rewatchable for those audiences (and if the US gave a shit too). 1B WW could've been a possibility. Warcraft wasn't the only scenario of DOM vs. OS discrepancies, but it was the poster child for sure.

 

9 - A golden (Lions)gate of errors - Talk about a shittastic year. Lionsgate's 2016 was pretty f'n awful, almost the total antithesis of Disney there. At least Paramount, who also had a baaaaad year, can at least say that they had some decent performers, particularly 10 Cloverfield Lane, Arrival, Office Christmas Party, and Star Trek Beyond (which didn't even break even WW, but still did... okay'ish). Lionsgate, on the other hand, only had three decent performing movies - Hacksaw Ridge, Madea Halloween, and La La Land. One of which didn't even go wide until 2017, and needed to be the Goddamn frontrunner for Best Picture, not to mention STILL had something about its run that didn't quite click (which would be the super late wide expansion... needed to go into 3000 theaters sooner). Apart from that, Lionsgate was just a collection of OS rescue jobs (Now You See Me 2, which, to be fair, did pretty great WW; Dirty Grandpa), disappointments (Blair Witch; Allegiant), and outright flops (Gods Of Egypt; Deepwater Horizon; Patriots Day). I wonder how many blowjobs are they giving to Suzanne Collins' family so that she writes more Hunger Games books.

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