Horror movies are almost always incredibly front-loaded at the box office, and generally open big and then burn out in the space of a few weeks. James Wan's classical, old-school haunted house movie defied the trend to become the biggest box office success story of 2013. Thanks to an effective marketing campaign and positive critical notices, The Conjuring opened to $41.9m domestically, setting a record for an original R-rated horror movie. Eschewing the usual trajectory for the horror genre at the box office, the movie held incredibly well and ultimately became the biggest horror movie at the domestic box office since The Blair Witch Project back in 1999. An unexpected global hit, The Conjuring took $316.7m worldwide, over fifteen times its $20m production budget. Put it this way, if Iron Man 3 (the year's biggest movie) had taken fifteen times its production budget it would have made $3 billion worldwide. The time was most definitely right for James Wan to step away from the horror genre. Runner-Up: The Croods To quote the trailer guy; in a world full of animated sequels, one movie surprised everybody by becoming one of the year's ten biggest hits. Despite having none of the built-in appeal and name recognition that studio executives love so much, The Croods became a smash hit, grossing almost $600m worldwide despite a slightly disappointing $43.6m domestic bow and the fact that as a movie, it's little more than okay. Although not the most original or inventive animated feature by any means, The Croods boasted enough in the way of light-hearted family entertainment to tide over the youngsters, holding extremely well with little direct competition. It speaks volumes about the continued appeal of animation that three of the year's ten biggest hits (and 7 of the top 30) are animated features, with The Croods holding the fort until box office behemoths Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 came along during the summer.
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