Blockbuster

The BBC informs us:

... 2013 was ... the year of the Hollywood blockbuster.

26 films costing more than $100m each were released by the major Hollywood studios - more than ever before. They are likely to have raked in tens of billions of dollars in worldwide box office revenues as a result - close to the record $35bn delivered in 2012.

The studios have become incredibly risk-averse in terms of the types of films they produce. Instead of taking a chance on new directors and original ideas, they produce tried-and-tested franchises, remakes and book adaptations. ...

Research by British film academics John Sedgwick and Mike Pokorny has found that not only have blockbuster films become more profitable over the past 20 years, they have become more reliably profitable: in the late 80s just 50% of major studio films turned a profit. In 2009 it was 90%. ...

"Blockbuster films are not really films," says Charles Acland, a professor of communication studies at Concordia University in Montreal, and author of the book Screen Traffic. "They are in fact very elaborate 'tent-pole' business models that connect all sorts of different commodities in all sorts of different industries." ...

A look at this year's top 10 highest-grossing films reveals just two original screenplays - animation The Croods and 3D epic Gravity. In both 2012 and 2011 there were none in the top 10. ...

Animation fills a large part of the blockbuster category. As of today, three of the top nine movies of 2013 are animated features -- Despicable Me 2 (#2), Monsters University (#5) and The Croods (#9). And Gravity, checking in at #7, is more animated feature than it is anything else.

By and large, the high grossers of Cartoonland cost less than their live-action counterparts; in Despicable Me 2's case, a whole lot less. The head of Universal has bragged that DM2 is the most profitable feature in the company's history. Since the feature cost $75 million and took in $919 billion million, he's probably right.

And since our fine, entertainment conglomerates are looking for sure-things at the box office, there is small doubt that animated features will continue to be part of the movie mix.