10 Ways You're Thinking About The Movie Industry All Wrong

10. The Domestic Box Office

What You Think: Who'd have thought it? Guardians Of The Galaxy, Marvel's film about a talking racoon and a tree has become the biggest film of the year. In a year full of umpteenth installments in franchises, including a fourth in Michael Bay's abysmal Transformers series, it's seventies music to our ears. Each week brings reports that it's still atop the domestic box office and that it's the highest domestic grossing film of the year, serving as proof that mainstream audiences will go for good, fun movies rather than terrible tat. The Truth: Notice how all the talk about Guardians' success, even when reported by international news outlets, involves the domestic box office? That's the industry term for the American market and while Guardians has been a worldwide hit, on a global scale it's not the hit of the summer. In fact it's nowhere close. The highest grossing film worldwide in 2014 thus far is Transformers: Age Of Extinction, making $250 million more than second place Maleficent. Guardians has made barely half of what the robots in disguise have, placing behind Spider-Man, X-Men and Captain America in terms of worldwide box office. Because America dominates the film industry it's fine to look at how movies are received there, but it's far from a good barometer of overall success. Of course, the press would much rather talk about how an adaptation of an unknown comic made a lot of money than a disgusting toy commercial breaking China box office records.