The Twilight Saga: New Moon, the werewolves/vampire romance sequel following Twilight (2008) and based upon Stephanie Meyer's teenage vampire books, claimed the North American box-office record for the biggest single-day and opening-day grosses at almost $72.7 million, besting the previous title holder, the Batman sequel The Dark Knight (2008) with about $67 million. It also became the third-biggest opening weekend on record in Hollywood history at $142.8 million, behind the The Dark Knight (2008) at $158.4 million, and Spider-Man 3 (2007) at $151.1 million, ousting Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) from the third spot with $135.6 million. It also scored the biggest opening two-day gross ever (at $115.9 million for Friday-Saturday), edging The Dark Knight's $114.8 million start, and the biggest midnight showing ever (at $26.3 million). Most accounts attributed the record-breaking hit to its 80 percent female audience.
Decade
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According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the highest grossing actress of the 2000s decade was Emma Watson, for her six live-action Harry Potter films (2001-2009), which earned $1.7 billion (domestic), or $5.4 billion (worldwide) - or roughly $900 million per film (worldwide). Likewise, her lead co-star Daniel Radcliffe was the highest average-grossing box-office star in a leading role in the decade, averaging about $285 million (domestic) per film.
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Decade
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The decade of the 2000s saw advancements in 3D and an explosion of releases of both 3-D films and IMAX films. And with many more theatres converted to the 3D format, that meant increased demand and bookings (and ticket prices) for 3D films. Older films like The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D (2006, original 1993), Toy Story in 3D (2009, original 1995), Toy Story 2 in 3D (2009, original 1999), and Night of the Living Dead 3D (2009, original 1968) were re-released in 3-D, and there were indications that the next phase of the 3-D Renaissance would be more 3D re-releases of classic blockbusters, such as Star Wars (1977), The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003), The Matrix (1999), Top Gun (1986), and Titanic (1997).
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2009
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At the end of 2009, the domestic yearly box-office gross topped the $10.6 billion mark, based upon US and Canadian ticket sales - it was a milestone year, besting the 2008 total of $9.63 billion. During the hard economic times of the recession, it once again illustrated that film-going could be a tonic for economic worries and concerns, especially with such crowd-pleasing films as Paramount's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), Warners' Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), 20th Century Fox's Avatar (2009) and Disney's/Pixar's Up (2009).
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2009
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For the first time since 2002, domestic movie ticket sales surpassed revenue from the purchase of DVDs. The recessionary economy and the current transitionary stage from DVDs to Blue-Ray and to video-on-demand digital downloads through Internet-enabled televisions, were partially accountable for the reversal.
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2009
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According to www.the-numbers.com, the most popular (top-grossing) film genres from 1995 to 2009 were Comedy (24%), Adventure (20%), Drama (19%), Action (17%), Thriller/Suspense (7%), Romantic Comedy (6%), Horror (5%), Documentary (1%), Musical (1%).
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2009
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The merge of the decade, between AOL and Time Warner, instituted in 2000, ended -- at the end of 2009, Time Warner announced that it would spin off AOL as a separate independent company.
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2009
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After celebrity Michael Jackson's unexpected and untimely death at age 50 on June 25, 2009, a documentary called This Is It was hastily constructed from 120 hours of upcoming London concert rehearsal footage (including interviews and backstage) filmed over a recent period of a few months - a fitting tribute and eulogy for the "King of Pop."
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2009
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In late August of 2009, Walt Disney Co. announced that it had agreed to purchase comic book and action hero company Marvel Entertainment for about $4 billion. Marvel was the comic-book company behind X-Men and Spider-Man. Disney's Pixar animation unit was expectant over the opportunities that the Marvel acquisition would generate. Marvel had launched a large number of action-hero films over the past decade, including Spider-Man (2002, 2004, 2007), X-Men (2000, 2003, 2006), and Fantastic Four (2005, 2007). Iron Man (2008) was Marvel Studios' first self-financed and self-produced movie, followed by The Incredible Hulk (2008).
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2009
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The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) decided to return to featuring an expanded field of nominees for Best Picture. From now on, there would be ten films nominated for Best Picture - the last time this happened was 1943 (66 years ago). The Academy was hoping for a possible increase in TV ratings for the awards ceremony (held two weeks later than the previous year), and a broader range of films. As hoped, the fact that Avatar was a nominee and the biggest blockbuster of all time did boost the ratings. Preliminary indications were that the TV ratings were up to 41.3 million viewers, much better than the previous year's 36.3 million (a 14% jump). It was the most watched show in five years -- a definite improvement over 2007's all-time low of 32 million viewers, the year the Best Picture win went, predictably, to No Country for Old Men (2007).
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2009
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Visionary director James Cameron's monumental work Avatar (2009), his first feature film since Titanic (1997), was a futuristic, epic 3-D live-action film, with ground-breaking special effects, and an estimated budget of $300 million (much of it spent on CGI). It became only the fifth film in movie history to exceed $1 billion in worldwide grosses, and did so in less than 3 weeks, and soon surpassed The Dark Knight (2008) to become the top grossing (domestic) film of the entire decade. Shortly later, it became the highest-grossing film of all-time (worldwide and domestic).
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2009
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The Best Picture-nominated sports-film The Blind Side (2009), a heart-warming drama starring Sandra Bullock, was Bullock's highest-grossing film ever, and the all-time top-earning film driven by a female star. It was also the highest-grossing football (sports-related) film of all time. Bullock won her first Oscar, Best Actress, for her role as a Southern belle foster mom. She also became the first (and only) performer to win both a Best Actress Oscar and a Worst Actress Razzie Award (for All About Steve (2009)) in the same year.
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2009
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Disney's animated The Princess and the Frog (2009), a modern day retelling of the classic story The Frog Prince, was the studio's first traditional 2-D animated film in 5 years, since Home on the Range (2004). It also featured the studio's first-ever black female protagonist, an African-American princess named Tiana (voice of Anika Noni Rose).
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2009
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The British political satire In the Loop (with one nomination, Best Adapted Screenplay) - marked the first instance that a film that premiered on VOD (video-on-demand) concurrent with its theatrical release was nominated for a major Oscar.
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2009
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Precious Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire (2009) was the first-ever Best Picture nominee to be directed by an African-American filmmaker, Lee Daniels, who received his first Best Director nomination for the film. Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar-winner Geoffrey Fletcher was the first African-American to win the award. Black actress and talk show host Mo'Nique also won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role as an abusive mother.
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2009
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Director Kathryn Bigelow's tense, nail-biting war film The Hurt Locker (2009) took top Oscar honors. Its six wins included Best Picture, defeating ex-husband director James Cameron's Avatar (2009), and Best Director. The latter win marked a milestone win for a female director (and American director), the first ever. It was the fifth consecutive R-rated Best Picture winner, and also notable as the lowest-grossing winner of all time, with a domestic box office of $14.7 million (8th place among the ten Best Picture nominees). Since the R-rated film was released in June of 2009, it was long since removed from theatres, and available on DVD since January 12, 2010 (with currently over 700,000 sold). Because of its Oscar nomination, it was re-released to almost 300 theatres, and increased its take by about $2 million, about 14% of its total revenue. However, compared to the top three nominated moneymakers of 2009, Avatar ($720 million), Up ($293 million), and The Blind Side ($250 million), its earnings were insignificant.
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2009
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Disney's/Pixar's animated film Up, the second animated film ever nominated for Best Picture (following Beauty and the Beast (1991)), won two Oscar awards: Best Animated Feature Film and Best Original Score, and was one of the top moneymakers of the year (at $293 million to date). It was the first CG-animated Best Picture nominee, and the first to receive a Best Picture nomination since animated films received their own category in 2001. It was the third consecutive Oscar in this category for Disney/Pixar, following Ratatouille (2007) and Wall-E (2008), with the studios now winning 5/9 awards since the new category was established in 2001.
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2009
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Betty Thomas became the most successful female director, measured by the domestic box-office take for her Christmas hit Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009). It was the first female-directed picture to gross more than $200 million (at $218 million in mid-March of 2010).
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2009
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Although women remained in the minority in terms of film-making (as directors, writers, and producers), 2009 was a watershed year, in addition to Kathryn Bigelow's Best Director win for The Hurt Locker (2009), and Betty Thomas' milestone as the most successful woman director ever at the box office (domestic) for Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009): (1) director Anne Fletcher's The Proposal (2009) (starring Sandra Bullock) was a tremendous hit, scoring $164 million (domestic) at the box-office, (2) It's Complicated (2009), directed and written by Nancy Meyers and starring Meryl Streep, made $112 million (domestic) at the box-office, (3) Best Actress Oscar-winning Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side (2009) and veteran actress Meryl Streep outperformed their male counterparts fairly consistently. Streep competed against Bullock and was Oscar-nominated for her lead role in writer/director Nora Ephron's Julie & Julia (2009), which made $94 million (domestic) at the box-office.
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2010
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Director Tim Burton's meandering 3-D version of Alice in Wonderland (2009), starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, surpassed previous opening weekend records for both the first and second quarter of the year, at $116 million (domestic). It beat Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004) record of $83 million for the biggest opening of a film in the first quarter (winter) of the year, and the record of Fast and Furious (2009) as the biggest opening of a film in the spring quarter at $71 million.
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