Studios that reaped rewards from Sci-Fi films

http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2010/12/science-fiction-box-office-numbers/
 John Scalzi - Seven Studios That Reaped Infinite Rewards From Sci-Fi
 Posted by John
Scalzi<http://comments.blogs.amctv.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=270&id=3013>on
Dec
29 2010
 [image: John Scalzi - Seven Studios That Reaped Infinite Rewards From
Sci-Fi]<http://www.filmcritic.com/features/2010/12/science-fiction-box-office-numbers/>
 [image: John Scalzi]<http://comments.blogs.amctv.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=270&id=3013>
John Scalzi<http://comments.blogs.amctv.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=270&id=3013>
John Scalzi is an award-winning science fiction writer.

<http://comments.blogs.amctv.com/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=270&id=3013>
   Here's kind of a fun film-nerd question to round out 2010: we all know
that science fiction is both popular and productive for film studios, but
which film studios have benefited the most from science fiction over the
years? Are there some for whom it has done better than others?

There are a number of ways of answering this question, some rather more
complicated than others. For this little exercise, I'm going to use one of
the simplest: I'm going to look at the ten films of each major studio that
have the highest domestic market grosses (as supplied by BoxOfficeMojo.com)
and use that. There are legitimate issues with this technique -- for
example, I'll be using grosses unadjusted for inflation, which favors more
recent films, and I'm ignoring the rest of the world outside the U.S. and
Canada -- but as a conversation starter, it's workable enough.

And which movie studios qualify as major? For the purposes of this exercise,
they are Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal, Disney, Sony, Paramount, and MGM,
although, admittedly, at this stage the latter has a major appellation
largely for historical and sentimental reasons. By and large subsidiaries of
these major studios are included in their box-office numbers, although there
are a few exceptions -- both Disney and Warner Brothers incorporate
box-office numbers from Pixar and New Line Cinema, respectively, only after
those respective studios were fully consumed by their larger partners.

So which studios have the highest percentage of science fiction in their top
films?*
*
*1. 20th Century Fox:* Eight of Fox's top ten highest-grossing films are
science fiction, a fact that is utterly unsurprising for the studio that
either produced or distributed all of the live-action *Star Wars* films to
date. (The animated *Clone Wars* film was put out through Warner Brothers.)
Five of the six *Star Wars* films are in the top ten (only *The Empire
Strikes Back* is missing), and the rest of the eight slots are filled by *
Avatar* (at number one), *Independence Day*, and *X-Men: The Last Stand*,
the latter of which also qualifies as a comic-book movie. The two remaining
films: *Home Alone* and *Night at the Museum*.

*2. Sony:* Sony (which incorporates Columbia and TriStar) has seven, three
of which are Spider-Man movies, which are science-fictional largely as a
courtesy -- Peter Parker has a quasi-scientific reason for having
superpowers, as do most of the villains. But I'm counting them, so there.
Three of the others are Will Smith films: the two *Men in Black* films and *
Hancock* (which teeters on the science-fictional borderline). The final
entry: *Terminator 2*, which back in the day was distributed by TriStar.

*3. Paramount:* This studio has six science-fiction films in its top roster:
The two Transformers films, the two Iron Man films, the most recent *Star
Trek* film (which was the most financially successful of all of the
*Trek*films) and
*Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull*, which to be fair is
mostly science-fictional as an afterthought, but, hey -- aliens. It is what
it is, man.

*4. Universal:* The home of *E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial*, which after
almost 30 years is still the studio's highest-grossing film. And for that
matter two of the three other science-fiction films in this studio's top ten
are directed by Steven Spielberg as well: *Jurassic Park* and its sequel, *The
Lost World*. Also in the top ten lineup: this year's animated film *Despicable
Me*. Which, yes, surprises me a bit.

*5. Warner Brothers:* Only two of this studio's top ten are science-fiction
films: *Inception*, from this year, and *The Matrix Reloaded*, from 2003.
Some folks would argue to include *The Dark Knight*, the studio's highest
grosser, but it falls into the "not quite science fiction" category for me.
As an aside, six of Warner Brothers' top ten movies are from the Harry
Potter series; it is for Warner what the *Star Wars* series is for Fox.

*6. Disney:* Has no science fiction in its top ten; its highest-grossing
science-fictional film would be *The Incredibles*, which, at $260 million
domestic, is $30 million below Disney's number 10 film (*The Lion, the Witch
and the Wardrobe*). The rest of the top ten are the *Pirates of the
Caribbean* films, three Pixar flicks, *The Sixth Sense*, and *The Lion King*
.

*7. MGM:* No science-fiction films here, either, and it's telling regarding
the current state of the studio that its highest grosser is now 70 years old
(*Gone With the Wind*), and only two of its top ten were released in the
last decade. This was once the largest movie studio in Hollywood; how the
mighty have fallen.

All told, out of 70 available top-ten slots for the major studios, science
fiction fills 27 -- nearly one out of every four. That's a pretty impressive
number for any single genre.

Johne Cook
| http://raygunrevival.com | http://authorculture.blogspot.com |

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