With a worldwide box-office gross of over $2.78 billion, Avatar is often proclaimed to be the "highest-grossing" film, but such claims usually refer to theatrical revenues only and do not take into account home video and television income, which can form a significant portion of a film's earnings. Once revenue from home entertainment is factored in it is not immediately clear which film is the most successful. Titanic earned $1.2 billion from video and DVD sales and rentals,[1] in addition to the $2.2 billion it grossed in theaters. While complete sales data are not available for Avatar, it earned $345 million from the sale of sixteen million DVD and Blu-ray units in North America,[2] and ultimately sold a total of thirty million DVD and Blu-ray units worldwide.[3] After home video income is accounted for, both films have earned over $3 billion each. Television broadcast rights will also substantially add to a film's earnings, with a film often earning as much as 20–25% of its theatrical box-office for a couple of television runs on top of pay-per-viewrevenues;[4] Titanic earned a further $55 million from the NBC and HBO broadcast rights,[1] equating to about 9% of its North American gross. When a film is highly exploitable as a commercial property, its ancillary revenues can dwarf its income from direct film sales.[5]The Lion King earned over $2 billion in box-office and home video sales,[6] but this pales in comparison to the $6 billion earned at box offices around the world by the stage adaptation.[7] Merchandising can be extremely lucrative too: The Lion King also sold $3 billion of merchandise,[8] while Pixar's Cars—which earned $462 million in theatrical revenues and was only a modest hit by comparison to other Pixar films[9]—generated global merchandise sales of over $8 billion in the five years after its 2006 release.[10][11] Pixar had another huge hit with Toy Story 3, which generated almost $10 billion in merchandise retail sales in addition to the $1 billion it earned at the box office.[12]
0 Comments