So, last year all the buzz was about how the box-office receipts were down. Would they ever recover? Oh no, no one is going to the movies and they are downloading all the movies what are we ever going to do? Well, 2006 has given us Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest which made $423,315,812 domestically, X-Men: The Last Stand which made $234,362,462 domestically, The Da Vinci Code which made $217,536,138 domestically and then a film like Casino Royale which has made $137,574,000 domestically without ever being number one at the box.
I would say things are looking up and I think Sony Pictures would agree as they announced today that their box-office receipts for 2006 have passed $1.573 billion, setting a new motion picture industry record for domestic box-office in a single year. Sony is actually surpassing a record they set back in 2002 thanks to a film called Spider-Man, you may have heard of it. On top of that record, which still has two weeks to grow, the studio also launched 13 films to opening weekends of more than $20 M, another industry record, and surpassed more than $3 billion in global ticket sales for the first time. Sony Pictures now holds the top two years in the all-time domestic box office record books.
This weekend marked one of the studio’s latest movie to hit the top spot and surpass that $20 million mark with The Pursuit of Happyness, which opened to an estimated $27 million.
