Superhero And Animated Movies Dominate 2016 Box Office

With the Summer blockbuster season already under way let’s take a look at the domestic box office results. It’s only the first week in June and we’ve already had five films that grossed over 300 million dollars domestically. By the end of the year in 2015, there was ‘only’ a total of six films that grossed more than 300 million dollars.

What’s surprising is that the traditional shoot em up action blockbusters of the past, like London Has Fallen and Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi aren’t breaking the top ten. Currently it’s almost entirely made up of animated films and comic books movies.

In the domestic top ten grossing films, we have four films based on comic books – Captain America: Civil War with $396 million, Deadpool with $363 million, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice with $330 million and X-Men: Apocalypse with $136 million. Mixed in with the super hero capes there are the animated films and one live action retelling that’s almost entirely CG. The Jungle Book brought in $352 million just behind Deadpool, Zootopia with $348 million, Kung Fu Panda 3 with $143 million and finally The Angry Birds Movie at $98 million. The only fully live action non-super hero films in the top ten are Kevin Hart and Ice Cubes buddy ‘comedy’ Ride Along 2 and J.J. Abrams produced 10 Cloverfield Lane starring John Goodman and Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

By the end of 2015 the only comic book film in the top 10 was Avengers: Age of Ultron. The rest of 2016 has two more comic book films coming up – DC’s Suicide Squad which stars blockbuster regular Will Smith and Marvel’s Doctor Strange which stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton. Between those two, the animated films Finding Dory and Ice Age: Collision Course there’s a good chance that we’ll see a top ten that only includes super hero and animated films.

It should be noted that the recently released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows – also a comic book movie – is at $61 Million in it’s second week. It’s unlikely by years end that though that it will break the top 20.