One of the biggest arguments that the movie industry has against piracy is that it is killing their business since people are downloading all these illegal movies and not paying to see them in theaters. While they press hard on this front recent box office numbers push back – hard – against this argument.
This weekend alone with the movie Final Destination chalking up $28.3 million has proven to be one to set a new record by. In the US alone this past weekend saw total box-office receipts of $120 million which is up from $100 million from the same weekend last year.
A summer movie season led by The Dark Knight is at $3.99 Billion with a traditionally popular long weekend movie time to go, is set to beat last years summer movie season record of $4.02 Billion. this past weekend’s box office breaks down something like this
- The Final Destination – $28.3 Million
- Inglourious Basterds – $ 19.6 Million
- Halloween II – $17.4 Million
- District 9 – $10.7 Million
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra – $8.0 Million
- Julie and Julia – $7.4 Million
- The Time Traveler’s Wife – $6.7 Million (and is rumored to have been picked up for a television series)
- Shorts – $4.9 Million
- Taking Woodstock – $3.8 Million
- G-Force $2.8 Million
All this on an already lucrative and hit laden movie season and one has to really wonder just what damage was really done by all those nasty, terrible people downloading movies from the Internet?
