Top 10 Box-Office Films of 2002

AP ^ | 12-30-2002

[Cagey]

Top 10 box-office films of 2002, according to Exhibitor Relations figures Monday:

1. "Spider-Man" $406 million.

2. "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones," $310 million.

3. "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," $240 million.

4. "Signs," $227 million.

5. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," $218 million.

6. "Austin Powers in Goldmember," $213 million.

7. "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," $200 million.

8. "Men in Black 2" $192 million.

9. "Ice Age," $176 million.

10. "Scooby-Doo," $153 million.

[FreeTally]

Terminator 3 seems like it will be something of a rehash of Terminator 2, doesn't it?

Yeh, I would say so. The producers are betting on the "you can sell the public anything" routine. There was nothing left for the story after T2. How original, lets send back another, more powerful terminator to try and kill Connor one more time(you know, because it would have been stupid to send something more powerful than the original "terminator" back the first time).

[DeFault User]

It's good that speech impediments do not impair cognitive function.

[ambrose]

you can suck the average person in with special effects

Frankly, I am finding myself increasingly bored by movie special effects. Most of it is CGI, which I find quite phony looking. The CGI version of Yoda, for example, stinks.

[caa26]

Remember the First Men in Black made tons of money, plus with Will Smith starring it will appeal to black people. I thought, I read earlier this year that African-Americans spend ten times more on movies than the rest of the population, which if true is a sad commentary. Seeing too much of the crap Hollywood produces today will rot your brain.

With that being said, I cannot wait until Matrix Reloaded is released.

[weegee]

And yet many DVDs can be had for less than the price of the soundtrack CD for the same film.

[weegee]

Killing Konner isn't the big thing. They need to send enough of the technology back in time so that they can make the robots that send the technology back in time so that...

[weegee]

All successful sequels are a rehash of what came before. That's what makes them work. Give the audience the same movie "again".

[js1138]

Its quite impressive that all movies except LOTR were out for several to many months, while LOTR hasn't been in theatres for an entire month, but still manages to hit #7 in box office gross for the entire year.

Most movies get two-thirds of their gross in the first three weeks.

I recommend www.worldwideboxoffice.com/ for total cash take. Movies like Harry Potter and LOTR have a larger world box office than American. It's ineresting to see which movies do well outside the U.S.

[weegee]

I didn't see Scooby Doo but the "source material" can be summed up rather quickly. Dobie Gillis, Thalia Menninger, Zelda, and Maynard G. Krebbs (together with a talking dog) solve mysteries. Almost every mystery can be summed up as a hoax perpetrated by the crooked property developer who will exclaim, "And I would have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for you meddling kids."

The made for TV Psycho sequel (I think it came between 2 and 3) used this crappy plot line.

I don't think that any "modern sensibility" take on Scooby Doo could have been any funnier than the one in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back (including the extra footage on the DVD).

[volchef]

"The Sheeple sure do love to watch drivel, don't they?"

Except for My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was a GREAT movie. Chic flick for sure, but great none the less. However, I did enjoy Star Wars and LOTR as well. Spiderman, on the other hand, was just awful.

[js1138]

Now we're supposedly seeing as much as 4 times more being made on DVD sales than at the box office.

This is only true of movies that bomb at the box office. DVD sales will never match box office for blockbusters.

[weegee]

While I like the Austin Powers character more than the Men In Black, I found the MIB sequel to be more consistent and entertaining throughout than the AP III.

Even the commentary for Goldmember has been turned over more to the director who thought it would be good to make a film about all of this family "drama". I wouldn't count the franchise out but it may have "jumped the shark".

[theFIRMbss]

>...but crap like Austin Powers is beyond me. I saw part of the first one after it came out on video. I couldn't figure out what was supposed to be funny. I am a huge comedy fan, but it was just stupid.

All three Powers films
have to be viewed as in-jokes
or they make no sense.

Each and every scene
is self-parody/homage
to actual, good

films. Watched just as "skits,"
they can be enjoyable.
The credit sequence

in Goldmember is
more entertaining then the
whole rest of the film.

(My least favorite thing
about the films is that if
you listen to the

commentary tracks
on disc, they never explain
the obvious gaffs,

but constantly speak
of the films as if they were
some kind of high art.

I do think some parts
are good, but these guys have their
heads 'way up their butts...)

[weegee]

Around HALF can be considered "science fiction" and yet http://www.MovieLink.com (the major film companies' collectively operated pay-per-download movies site) continues to have a remarkably lame sci-fi selection.

Genre film is never respected and what does get major release is often pap (Sturgeon's law, 90% of everything is crud). That said, there are some more intelligent/entertaining SF and horror films being made here and around the world.

I think that these films lead the box office take because young people may be more likely to pay multiple times to see a new feature and these are the movies that would appeal to them.

[ksen]

I don't know how Men in Black 2 made so much money....

[rightwingreligiousfanatic]

ROFL!

Yeah, and what happened to Lilo and Stitch... Now there was a real classic...

[InterceptPoint]

No R ratings on this list.

I guessed as much.

This is the norm isn't it? So can someone explain to me why 95% of the movies that are made (with the goal, I assume, of making making money) are designed from the get-go to be rated R? I think the answer is that if you live an R-Rated life then making R-Rated movies just comes naturally.

[RobRoy]

>>Yeah, and what happened to Lilo and Stitch... Now there was a real classic... <<

My family can usually get into that kind of stuff to some degree, but that one was just STOOPID, with a capital "U".

[rightwingreligiousfanatic]

I know. That was one where the ads were way better than the actual.... very disapointing....

[Jadge]

"DVD sales will never match box office for blockbusters.

Actually, you are very wrong. The numbers we are looking at are gross figures. A large percentage of those stay with the exhibitors (theatre chains). Then there are the production and advertising costs which are generally not recouped from a theatrical release.

Most films are just a two hour advertisement for their video release. This is where the money is made. DVD sales only help to enhance this market. Consider every type of store that sells or rents DVDs. Blockbuster, Best Buy, Walmart, etc, etc. They are everywhere. Now multiply that by the number of towns in the country that house these retailers. We are talking about tremendous sales, and tremendous business. It dwarfs revenues generated by the theatrical release.