Suggesting that the film industry’s box office returns are just going to keep on going up, until all is Movie, and life is but the block it busts, THR reports tonight that 2018 is on track to be the biggest year yet for American ticket sales. With 19 days left to go in the year, 2018 film revenues have already sailed past the $11 billion mark, and are well on their way to bypassing the current record-holder for the domestic box office, 2016's $11.4 billion boom.
Much of that cash, unsurprisingly, is now in the hands of Disney, which thrived this year, despite the fact that its sole Star Wars outing, Solo, was a financial disappointment. (At nearly $400 million worldwide, that’s a pretty relative distinction, but the point stands.) The studio still had the year’s biggest success stories, both domestically—Black Panther, at $700 million—and internationally, with Avengers: Infinity War likely to hold its place as 2018's biggest performer across the globe, despite losing to Wakanda in the American market. Between those films, The Incredibles 2, Ant-Man And The Wasp, and, yes, even Solo, Disney dominated the list of top American performers this year. (And that’s before Mary Poppins swings by next week to potentially supercalifragilistically crush the competition.)
Other top performers Stateside included Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Venom, Mission Impossible, and Deadpool 2. (Suggesting that, yes, the American mass market movie taste still runs toward dinosaurs, comic books, and watching Tom Cruise brutally fuck himself up.) Things don’t show any signs of slowing down, either; the holiday season hosts easily sold stuff like Aquaman and Bumblebee, plus this weekend’s hotly anticipated Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, all of which are expected to easily goose 2018 returns over the 2016 records—despite the absence of a big, fancy Star Wars movie to lock those audiences in.
Anyway, we’ll see you all in this same space again next year, when Endgame, Captain Marvel, and The Lion King will presumably join forces to wage their most brutal battle on the American movie-going dollar yet.