Top Earners

At the end of January, the top grossing features released in '14:

Top Motion Pictures

1) Hunger Games

2) Guardians of the Galaxy

3) Captain America: Winter Soldier

4) The LEGO Movie

5) The Hobbit 3

6) Transformers

7) Maleficent

8) X-Men: Days of Future Past

9) Big Hero 6

10) American Sniper

Here's what strikes me: With a couple of exceptions, these movies are all heavily animated. They've got a plethora of animated effects and characters, and so the meme, "Animated flicks just aren't doing as well as they did a couple of years ago" is pretty much flapdoodle.

Because 80% of the above take big crews of animators, designers, lighters, surfacers, etc. So, okay, there's live action in there too, but there are CG animation houses working on these opuses in California, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and various other points on the campus.

I haven't seen data, but global employment, despite the DreamWorks Animation blood-letting, is on the ascendant.