Deadline has compiled a list of the highest-grossing movies at the North American box office for each since 1989, including the most recent winner, 2023’s Barbie. With a few noted exceptions, the list is dominated by superheroes, Star Wars, animation and, of course, Harry Potter. Click on the photo above to launch the photo gallery
Distribution
Lionsgate Motion Picture Group executive Helen Lee-Kim has inked a new long-term deal as President, International. The news comes before Lionsgate takes over the world this holiday season with the highly anticipated prequel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes on Nov. 17, which was cleared for a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement; one of
Editor’s note: Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing are co-authors of Open Wide: How Hollywood Box-Office Became a National Obsession. Hayes is Deadline’s Business Editor and Bing is Chief Communications Officer at Vice Media Group. The more things change, the more the Hollywood studios stay the same. At least that’s one of the surprising lessons of
D. Barry Reardon, former longtime Warner Bros. President of Sales and Distribution, has died at 92. The exec known as “The Dean of Distribution” among industry peers and filmmakers passed May 27 in Vero Beach, FL. Reardon was the head of theatrical distribution at Warner Bros from 1978-99, and was known for breaking the mold
The death of MGM distribution chief Erik Lomis on Wednesday has shocked many around Hollywood. More than just being a sage to filmmakers and executives about the motion picture business, Lomis was known for his generosity fundraising with the Will Rogers Institute, cultivating others’ careers, and even being a mentor to many in their personal
The head of the VC firm that invested several hundred million dollars in A24 a year ago says the indie producer-distributor’s “extraordinary” momentum could lead to a large international business and potential acquisitions. As is their wont, A24 executives are not talking publicly, but Stripes partner Ken Fox did speak with Deadline soon after the
Sony Pictures Classics said it’s planning to release Sean Mullin’s documentary on baseball superstar Yogi Berra, It Ain’t Over, in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on May 12, expanding over following weeks. The film is produced by Natalie Metzger, Matt Miller, Peter Sobiloff and Mike Sobiloff with Vanishing Angle and Off Media, and
Roadside Attractions has taken domestic rights for To The End, the follow-up film from Rachel Lears (Knock Down The House), and set a Dec. 9 theatrical-only release date. The deal was announced by Co-Presidents Howard Cohen and Eric d’Arbeloff. The film, which premiered at Sundance, covers three years of both hope and crisis leading to
Widespread optimism months ago that domestic box office might readily return to pre-Covid levels has given way to a new sense of pragmatism about the movie business. This year’s tally will far surpass last year’s $4.5 billion haul, but it will certainly fall billions short of 2019’s $11.4 billion in receipts, and all bets are
EXCLUSIVE: Mooky Greidinger, CEO of Cineworld, the world’s second-biggest exhibition circuit and owner of Regal Cinemas, says he’s satisfied with this past weekend’s $80M domestic theatrical box office opening for Disney/Marvel’s Black Widow. But he also tells Deadline he remains “convinced” that with an exclusive theatrical window, “we could have brought in maybe $110M, maybe
It’s thrilling to watch Lionsgate make a run at the box office top spot with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, a grown-up comedy. Not a kiddie fantasy, like Peter Rabbit 2 or Cruella. Not a Covid-era placeholder, like The War With Grandpa, or a streaming event, like Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. But a rough, raucous, R-rated action
On Wednesday morning, studio executives and exhibitors will rally at AMC’s Century City 15 multiplex to cheer the return of movie theaters that had been closed by the pandemic. “The Big Screen Is Back,” they’ll declare. Glad to hear it. That’s great, as far as it goes. But those movers and shakers should probably charter
EXCLUSIVE: Universal executive Xavier Albert, who has been Managing Director for France since 2016, is taking on a dual-market role with the studio and will also become Managing Director for Italy. Albert will take over the MD Italy post from Richard Borg who is retiring in July after 30 years with the Universal Pictures International
Lionsgate has slated Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar for a February 12 release on premium video on demand, the latest concession to a theatrical marketplace upended by Covid-19. The comedy, which was set up nearly two years ago, had originally eyed a 2020 release. It pairs Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, who
It was supposed to be a year when the playing field became even. After losing to Disney for four years in a row, with the Burbank studio setting an industry record in 2019 of $13.2 billion global box office, a new major studio was set to become the domestic king. “I think 2020 is going
What a great time not to be a movie marketer. Theaters half-closed, with COVID-19 again rising. Pipeline dried up. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asking, in a survey that was due last week, how the pandemic is affecting your craft. Or what’s left of it. But movie promoters on the whole are an
In response to MGM’s No Time to Die moving out of the Thanksgiving corridor to Easter weekend 2021, Cineworld, owner of U.S. Regal chain, is closing down 128 of its UK and Ireland cinemas as of next week. The Sunday Times in the UK teased the front page of their edition tonight, which had the news
Watching Wayne Wang’s Coming Home Again, set for a virtual release (online, but through individual theaters) by Outsider Pictures on Oct. 23, delivered a jolt. Like getting nicked by a live wire. The picture is so small–shot in just over three weeks on a micro-budget. So personal: The story is about a young Korean-American man
In or around 1976, I caught a forlorn moment near New York’s Bleecker St. It was early morning. The sun was just up. Two ragged guys were shuffling toward me on the sidewalk, when one offered the other a bottle in a bag. But the drink was declined. “I guess I lost my taste for
Talk about box-office drama. As the July 4 weekend unwinds, IFC’sThe Truth might be slugging it out with Homewrecker from Dark Star and The Outpost from Fathom for the honor of ranking somewhere in the 300s, near IFC’s own Wiener-Dog, among all-time Independence Day performers. (Who can say for sure, as release dates have become
Warner Bros has keyed up a re-release of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy in Hong Kong and Taiwan, ahead of the mid-July launch of the director’s latest epic, Tenet. The three films — Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises — will release over several weeks. The first rollout is in Taiwan
EXCLUSIVE: When the Danny Boyle-directed fable Yesterday was released last June, it was viewed as a bright spot for counter-programming at a moment when Toy Story 4 owned the box office leading into Spider-Man: Far From Home. The Universal/Working Title film, which grossed over $153.7M worldwide, did well enough to make it onto a list
A group of 51 European film and audiovisual organizations and individual companies has released a call for action by EU and member state decision makers to safeguard the future of the sector in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The statement, see it in full below, says the industry requires “urgent financial support now and
France’s National Film Center, the CNC, has taken measures to relax the country’s notoriously strict windows policy during the coronavirus pandemic. A reduction from the traditional four-month delay between theatrical release and DVD or TVOD was earlier granted for all titles that were already in cinemas on March 14, while movies whose release was set
Last week, Illumination/Universal’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru stepped off of its global release which was previously set for late June in some offshore markets and for July 3 domestically. It has now been scheduled for July 2, 2021, taking the slot that belonged to Sing 2, which in turn is now headed to Christmas
Editors’ Note: With full acknowledgment of the big-picture implications of a pandemic that has already claimed thousands of lives, cratered global economies and closed international borders, Deadline’s Coping With COVID-19 Crisis series is a forum for those in the entertainment space grappling with myriad consequences of seeing a great industry screech to a halt. The
Suddenly, 2020 is a year of imponderables. Will there be a Cannes Film Festival? Given the coronavirus-induced cancellation of SXSW, MipTV, and the AFI Life Achievement Gala, who knows? Is Marvel’s Black Widow the big spring-summer hit, now that No Time To Die is bumped to November? Maybe, if an April/May release still looks wise
“The impact in 2020 from Corvid-19 (coronavirus) on the motion picture business cannot be overstated,” a finance source recently told us. That’s as the closure of cinemas in China alone is approaching a loss of $2B to the global box office, while the disease has now seen spikes in Korea and Italy. What looked in
Two and a half cheers for the Landmark Theatres in West Los Angeles. The parking escalators have been broken for weeks. Those purple and black staff outfits are a bit somber. And $15 dollars seems high for an hour and 35 minutes of Linda Ronstadt: The Sound Of My Voice, as delightful as it is.