The Winners and Losers of 2009’s Record Setting Summer

Posted by Bethany Perryman (bethany@filmschoolrejects.com) on September 2, 2009

summer09-winners

Recognize: This year’s summer box office numbers are in! $4.17 billion bones, by our last count. Which also happens to be the entire United Nations Operating Budget. What am I saying? Dolla dolla bills, y’all. Dolla. Dolla. Bills.

Don’t tell me that global warming isn’t caused by the recession, or that price inflation isn’t melting our polar ice caps. That’s right. I went there. $4.17 billion dollars!

This Year’s Top Ten:
(click each title to read our review)

1. $399.4 mil: Transformers: Revenge of the the Fallen

2. $294.3 mil: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

3. $289.6 mil: Up

4. $270.2 mil: The Hangover (Record Breaker! Highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time.)

5. $256.7 mil: Star Trek

6. $193.3 mil: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

7. $179 mil: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

8. $176.5 mil: Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian

9. $160 mil: The Proposal (Record Breaker! Highest grossing summer rom-com of all time.)

10. $133.4 mil: Angels and Demons (Record Breaker! Only movie in the Top 10 Box Office Hits of Summer 2009 to likely be overtaken by G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra…in about two hours.)

Honorable Mention: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra comes in at #11 (for now…), with $132.2 million, after four weeks in theaters.

In every summer movie season, there are winners and losers. Them’s the breaks:

summer09-cgi

Winner:

CGI. Well over half of this summer’s top ten movies feature prevalent-if-not-prominent CGI and/or animation. Be it an entire animated picture, the vast and lonely universe, or possibly racist robots, computer generated imagery is the balls. If you’re looking to watch the facial lines of Sean Penn or Mickey Rourke’s pocked-up tan lines execute a beautiful story of the triumph of the human spirit, you’ve come to wrong rodeo. The unwashed masses have spoken, and it’s categorically true: 2009 will be known in cinematic circles everywhere as The Summer of Blowing Shit Up.

Loser:

Sacha Baron Cohen. Although I thought it was hilarious, Bruno averaged like 11 cents per theater.

summer09-escapism

Winner:

Escapism. Ah, summer. Time to suspend reality. Let the mind wander. Allow yourself to be unencumbered by the necessary plausibility of the harsher times of year…

No — fucking, seriously. Look at that list again. Absolutely none of these stories are remotely probable. Fighting robots? Eric Bana as a Romulan?  A vatican conspiracy with adamantium claws? I can handle that. But, why would Ryan Reynolds get even half a chub for Sandra Bullock? Fantastical! And who would have their bachelor party in Vegas?! Psh. I can see right through that one.

Loser:

Actors Who Are Famous & Make Lots of Money. Will Ferrell’s movie bombed. Meryl Streep was a bit clownish, even for yet another one of her largely flawless performances. Tom Hanks’s vehicle will predictably fall out of the top ten. Adam Sandler/Judd Apatow’s Funny People – while funny – is limping by. I completely forgot about Jonny Depp’s Public Enemies until I just wrote this sentence. Get the idea?

While there will be some obvious exceptions to this rule, (Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds with Brad Pitt, for one. That oughta net some coin.)  some of the most iconic and memorable characters of this record-breaking summer are no-names, cameos, or simple character actors.

Is it more about the spectacle? Is it more about A-Lister’s summer movie role choices? Or is it more about the fact that I’d pay to see the closing credits of The Hangover ten times over and hey-there’s-that-guy-from-The-Office-oh-and-by-the-way-who-is-this-Bradley-Cooper-character? I don’t know. You tell me. Either way, if you’re considered an A-List actor, and you had a movie this summer, well…not so fast, anyone-but-the-Harry-Potter-kid. Don’t quit that work you’re doing for Oscar season just yet. Looks like you’re gonna need it.

summer09-franchise

And the Big Winner?

Franchise Films. Michael Bay made an overbearing, 149-fucking-minute movie about robots. Star Trek got a sexy 21st century reboot. Harry Potter continues to dominate the family-friendly/tween market. Ice Age once again pissed off creationists. Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, Hank Azaria and friends continued to bogart the actual enculturation of today’s youth by making films that cost more than the price of museum admission. Even Angels & Demons managed to eke out a (however unsecure) spot in the top ten.

You know, we Americans truly are a simple people, asking only to come out of the hot sun and to be entertained with familiar story lines and delicious popcorn. Except in the case of The Hangover, we largely ask not to be bothered with learning new names, joke structures, plot lines, alternatives to a Leonard Nimoy reprisal, or catch phrases. We don’t want to craft truly new conceptions of zeitgeist, but only to be reminded, through countless permutations, that we are already hip to it. In other words, we just want to see what we’ve already seen before, but with just enough different and new so as to capture our attention and make us smile until it’s time to put the kids down for a nap/get handsy with our summer fling. Or movies based on books written at a 6th grade reading level or classic toys. We like those, Hollywood. We certainly like those.

What’s your top pick for Summer 2009?


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  • kamish
    The Losers for the most part...Audiences, most lackluster Summer at the Movies in years...
  • rpaine
    I disagree..District 9, Inglourious Basterds, Drag Me to Hell, Star Trek, The Hangover, Up, Orphan, Harry Potter... I even enjoyed G.I. Joe. However I hated Bruno, and didn't enjoy Public Enemies too much.
  • kamish
    I agree that most of the movies you mentioned are pretty good and solid, but the list of shitty flicks is much longer...Wolverine, Land of the Lost, Bruno, Year One, Transformers 2, Terminator Salvation, Funny People, G-FORCE, Taking of Phelam 123, Imagine That and I love you Beth Cooper...so top to bottom weak summer with a surprise in district 9 and a couple of other very enjoyable experiences, that's it...Just not many I want to add to my DVD collection...
  • Funniest article I've read in a while. I wanna know, though, what was the biggest profit maker. I'd guess The Hangover, because it was so cheap to make, but ROTF made a lot of money...
  • adamcharles
    when you consider worldwide box-office numbers ROTF is the biggest profit-maker, but domestic numbers only then The Hangover's profits (based solely on gross) had the largest profit.
  • mike
    when you look at biggest profit maker in terms of percentages The Hangover still trumps ROTF as it grossed worldwide over 1000% of it's production budget whereas ROTF grossed just over 400% of it's production budget. I've also heard that things like advertising budgets need to be considered when accounting for "profit" but aren't included in the actual production budget... with ROTF I'm sure the advertising budget was much higher than The Hangover, but I am not certain this is true. Either way, they both made ridiculous coin.
  • adamcharles
    percentage-wise you're right, but regardless we're still talking about which film made more money. And it is also true that advertising budgets are not (I don't think) included in the production budgets, and I would agree that the advertising budget for Transformers was probably significantly more than The Hangover.

    Though, another thing to consider is that Transformers made 75% of its box-office gross within the first 2 weeks of release. The Hangover only brought in about 40% of its overall gross during that time. What this means is that Transformers made the majority of its money during the time that the studio gets the largest percent of the ticket sale. As the weeks wear on the percentage of the ticket sale begins to lean towards the owner of the theater, and this is where The Hangover made most of its money due to really good word-of-mouth. So, even though The Hangover may have grossed percentage-wise a more impressive number comparatively to Transformers, The studio that produced Transformers is likely to see a larger percentage of the gross take than the studio that produced The Hangover.

    This is part of the reason that big opening weekends are so important to the studio, because it's the time that they bring in the majority of the ticket sale price.

    There are a lot of things to consider when you talk about which film profited more than the other, and really only the studios know for sure how much each film *actually* made/makes.
  • voncastle
    Extremely silly the comment about Meryl - she proved to be box office solid gold at age 60! who else, ever in movie history?
    Julie&Julia made a gazillion dollars for its cost and, let's face it, it's a Movie about cooking!!!!
    Try-to-robot-that!
    Meryl saves the world from global recession, if you ask me...
  • finalcrisis2
    So who was the Big Loser? In relation to the article, not that one show about losers and who the biggest one is.
  • Kirk Lazarus
    The Hangover = Overrated

    several comedies released last year are superior to this....Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Burn After Reading....
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