When I was barely a teenager, I remember going to the movies on hot summer nights with my friends, buying tickets to the PG movies and sneaking into “R” rated movies because we were not 18. At the time Forrest Gump was hot at the box office and my friends and I must have gone to see that movie ten times that summer. Granted, Forrest Gump, number nine on the top-10 list, was not an “R” rated film, it did however grant us enough time away from our parents to do “R” rated things in the parking lot…like sneak out to smoke cigarettes.
“Momma always said, stupid is, is stupid does” (Forrest Gump). Although I never understood what that “stupid” saying meant, I do understand that summer box offices usually fuel movie studios’ bottom line. In this entry I looked into the top-10 top grossing summer films of all times, in order to decide which publicly traded stocks might perform better due to the success of its children; the movie studio.
Because I like to stay up-to-date (haha), I found an article from 2011 at Marketplace.org entitled, “The Top Grossing Summer Films of all Time.” After viewing the list of ten, I then cross-referenced the movie titles at BoxOfficeMojo.com to figure out which movie studio produced the film. After figuring the movie studio, I then connected the dots to its umbrella, publicly traded stock. The results and recent acquisitions of certain film enterprises may surprise you!
Fox, Universal, Paramount, and Buena Vista were the only four studios in the top ten. Fox produced four of the all time movies, Universal: three, Paramount: two, and Buena Vista: one. In case you were wondering, Fox is owned by News Corp., Universal is owned by GE, Paramount is owned by Viacom, and Buena Vista is owned by Disney. It is evident that FOX is the big winner, not only with the highest number of box-office hits, but also because it holds the number #1 spot in the top grossing summer films of all times with $1.3 trillion dollars. What did you say? TRILLION? Yes, I said trillion and the movie was Star Wars (the original), according to Marketplace.org.
But wait, didn’t Disney just acquire the rights to the Star Wars franchise from Spielberg? Yes, they did. So here is my prediction, with this new acquisition, Disney will hold the market share in the future for top-grossing summer blockbusters.
Refute it I dare you. Haha.
Resources:
Jefferson, M. (May 30, 2011). Marketplace.org. The top grossing summer films of all time. Retrieved from Marketplace.org at
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/news-brief/top-grossing-summer-films-all-time
boxofficemojo.com
Hollywood.com