This weekend, Disney is re-releasing ‘Avengers: Endgame’ with bonus footage in a last-ditch attempt to push the Marvel epic past ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ and ‘Avatar’ to become the highest-grossing movie in the US and the world. As it stands, ‘Avengers: Endgame’ is easily the highest-grossing movie of the year, having earned over two billion dollars worldwide. The top ten highest-grossing motion pictures of 2019 also include ‘Captain Marvel’, ‘Aladdin’, ‘Us’, ‘Toy Story 4’, ‘How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World’, ‘John Wick: Chapter 3’, ‘Detective Pikachu’, ‘Shazam!’, and ‘The Secret Life of Pets 2’. Those are the movies that have made the most in ticket sales, but they all had a lot to make up for with their humongous budgets. That means that even though these movies are all certified hits and have made billions combined, some of them haven’t even turned a profit yet.
That brings us to the most profitable movie of the year, and it’s a rather shocking result– Blumhouse and Universal’s low-budget thriller ‘Ma’, starring Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer! ‘Ma’ has made over $57 million worldwide, on a production budget of a lowly $5 million! This film reunited Spencer with Tate Taylor, who previously directed her in her big breakout ‘The Help’.
The film opened a month ago, making $18.2 million for the weekend. It was the #4 movie that weekend, falling behind newcomer ‘Godzilla: King of the Monsters’, and holdovers ‘Aladdin’, and ‘Rocketman’. But once again, those movies had such huge budgets for both production and promotion, that they are still scraping to make a profit. In the case of ‘Godzilla’, that may actually lose money. ‘Men in Black: International’ and ‘Dark Phoenix’ will absolutely lose money.
Blumhouse also released ‘Glass’ and ‘Happy Death Day 2U’ earlier this year. ‘Glass’ had a higher than normal budget, and ‘Happy Death Day 2U’ came in under expectations, considering it was a sequel to a surprise hit. The studio will round out the year with yuletide slasher ‘Black Christmas’.
Next year, Blumhouse has ‘Fantasy Island’ and ‘The Invisible Man’ opening, both of which carry budgets higher than $5 million. But they are still considerably cheaper than the average studio picture.
So congrats to Blumhouse, Universal, Taylor, and Spencer for quietly delivering the most profitable movie of 2019 so far!
Source: Box Office Mojo
