“I don’t think it’s realistic to try and topple ‘Titanic’ off its perch” / The short head of movies (part 1)

 

“I don’t think it’s realistic to try and topple ‘Titanic’ off its perch”

This is what James Cameron, the director of the movie Titanic, said in an interview to MTV on December 2009, few days before his movie, Avatar, was released.

The movie Titanic was released in 1997 and since then held the record of highest grossing film of all times and the first movie to reach one billion dollars.

No wonder that Cameron was afraid to declare that he aims higher. Nobody was able to break his “Titanic” record for 12 years. Why would he be the one to do it now?

He did.

It didn’t take “Avatar” long to break both records of the Titanic – becoming the number one grossing film of all times and the first movie to reach 2 billion dollars.

But Avatar is just an example. In the last several years the blockbusters became huge. The movie hits are now mega-hits.

Only last week we saw another example of the mega hit potential of new movies when the remake movie “Jurassic World” broke every opening-weekend record and reached more than half a billion dollars in one weekend!

Only 21 movies ever have reached 1 billion dollars until today – 16 of them were released in the last 7 years! Another 2 were released earlier in the 2000th and the last 3 were released in 1997, 1999 and in 1993.

connect the dots

Here is the winners list:

21 movies have reached 1 billion$ revenues
21 movies have reached 1 billion$ revenues

Source: www.boxofficemojo.com

So what happened to the movies in the last couple of years that they are so huge now? Where did all these Hits come from? What happened to the long tail and why are we all going to the same movies turning them into such big hits?

Read the next 2 posts about the short head of the movie industry…

https://theshorthead.com/category/the-short-head-of-movies/

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