The 2007 blockbuster season exceeded the projected numbers in emphatic style. Hollywood top brass were celebrating the first $4bn North American summer before the season officially came to a close over the Labor Day weekend (August 31-September 3), and the international profile looks equally bullish.


According to informal figures collated by one of the studios, the combined total of films released overseas by the six majors from May 1 to August 27 reached $4.3bn. That is 25%-30% ahead of the record 2004 summer, and this figure does not even accommodate the smaller distributors and local companies.

In the last four months, three films have crossed $550m internationally: Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End, the biggest film of the year to date on $651m; Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix on $625m, and Spider-Man 3 on $554m. Five releases swept past $350m (add in Shrek The Third on $436m and Transformers' $375m) and two more have crossed $200m (The Simpsons Movie on $304m and Die Hard 4.0 on $223m).

Two more have zipped past $100m (Ratatouille on $190.5m and Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer on $145.5m), and by conservative estimates both The Simpsons Movie and Ratatouille will finish on more than $320m.

The box office was driven by a mighty roster of sequels, headed by the trio of threes in May (Spider-Man, Shrek and Pirates) and tentpole releases that at first sight seemed unwieldy.

There were concerns that the marketplace would be unable to sustain such a stampede, but the reality is that every Hollywood film that was genuinely expected to perform did so.

Hollywood is in the grip of sequelitis. The summer months are not for the purists, and Hollywood has been monetising its assets. Exchange rates have inflated the grosses, but towering local currency grosses suggest audiences are heading to the multiplexes again and again. Extreme weather in Europe, by all accounts, has had little impact.

International grosses are exceeding their domestic counterparts on most tentpoles. Recognisable stars and properties, increasingly sophisticated distribution operations, and growth in local exhibition sectors are critical factors, along with greater discretionary incomes in booming markets such as Russia, China, South Korea and Latin America.

Dating international releases is harder than ever

'If you're going to go day-and-date with the movie, you've got to make sure you've got some built-in awareness,' says Paramount Pictures International (PPI) president Andrew Cripps.

'Sequels are a natural to go day-and-date on, but again it comes down to what audience you're targeting. We felt for Shrek it wasn't the right thing, and I think we've been proven right. I'd much rather play closer to the holidays and then play into the holidays when the kids are available. I think if we'd gone day-and-date in mid-May it would have cost us a lot of money. It would have still done well, but it wouldn't have done this well.'

PPI's staggered release pattern for Shrek The Third was 'the fly in the ointment' according to Fox's Tomas Jegeus, who adds that dating international releases has become harder than ever.

'That caused a lot of problems internationally because it's such a behemoth and we were forced to plan around it - at least with Fantastic Four 2 because of its big, family audience, and to some extent Die Hard 4.0. We would have liked to have gone day-and-date with a big movie like Fantastic Four 2... but distributors have their own strategies and we have to live by that.'

'Going day-and-date was the right thing to do for Pirates 3 or Spider-Man 3, which everyone knows about, but it didn't suit Ratatouille,' says Walt Disney's Anthony Marcoly. The decision was taken to stagger the release of the latest Pixar film, building up interest in local territories by adding recognisable celebrity chefs like Jamie Oliver in the UK to the voice cast, and rolling the film out in the UK, Germany, Italy and Scandinavia in October during school half-term holidays.

How the studios did

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International had the hit of the summer in Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End, which launched day-and-date in May and currently ranks as the fourth biggest overseas release in history on $651m. Ratatouille still has plenty of territories to go, including the UK in October, and has so far grossed more than $190m.

The second biggest release of the summer was Warner Bros Pictures International's Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, which stands at more than $635m since its July launch.

Ocean's Thirteen may not have done as well as its predecessors since the franchise switched to a summer launch, but few will argue with its $190m tally.

Paramount Pictures International enjoyed a prosperous season thanks to two stellar DreamWorks titles: Shrek The Third stands at $451m and counting, while Transformers has amassed more than $378m.

Sony Pictures Releasing International kicked off the summer with the record-breaking day-and-date May launch of Spider-Man 3, which took approximately $231m in its opening weekend and finished on more than $550m.

Fox International enjoyed tremendous success with The Simpsons Movie as the big-screen adaptation crossed $300m in the last weekend of August. Bruce Willis returned triumphantly to the role of John McClane in Die Hard 4.0, which stands at $223m, while the Fantastic Four sequel is approaching $150m with territories still to open.

Universal is the only studio not to pass the $1bn mark overseas so far this year, but that is not to say it is not doing well on balance. While the costly comedy sequel Evan Almighty is replicating its lacklustre domestic form in the international arena ($51.7m so far), The Bourne Ultimatum is building solidly and has already taken more than $98m from the early stages of its run. Knocked Up, North America's sleeper hit of the summer, has taken more than $44.4m and also has plenty of territories still to go. And Mr Bean's Holiday has been a big hit for Universal. It has grossed close to $200m, although it did most of its business before the summer.


Summer 07 - A crowded marketplace didn't prevent a big summer

Concerns that there were too many films in the summer market were not borne out by box-office numbers. 'This summer everyone had a hit,' Anthony Marcoly, president of international sales and distribution at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International (Wdsmpi), says.

'Even considering the extremely hot weather and the floods in Europe, overall box office wasn't impacted that much because product is what drives this business.'

The $231m record day-and-date launch of Spider-Man 3 set the tempo at the start of May. 'We wanted to get that first slot,' Sony Pictures Releasing International's president of distribution Mark Zucker says.

'We had a couple of weeks before the day-and-date release of Pirates 3 and that gave us time to get some momentum going.' At the end of May, Wdsmpi's Pirates 3 had a $216m opening weekend and became the summer's biggest film.

Setting the right date is critical. 'Nothing is ever set in stone unless you've got a really, really strong film,' Warner Bros Pictures International's (Wbpi) president of distribution Veronika Kwan-Rubinek says.

'When we set the dates for Harry Potter they stayed in place, but generally you try to manoeuvre as you see fit. We picked July 13 for Harry Potter because it would work well with the holidays in most markets.' Wbpi's films grossed $970m from May 1 to August 31.

'We had three films - Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, Die Hard 4.0 and The Simpsons Movie - and they all performed beyond expectations,' Fox International co-president Tomas Jegeus says.

'We played almost a game of chess with Transformers in the UK, because we opened The Simpsons the same day (July 27) and that film had just broken records in the US. We won the weekend by quite a distance; that's important because it becomes news and helps sustain word of mouth.'

Innovative marketing ideas are invaluable

As critical as ever, summer 2007 spawned a couple of strokes of genius. Wbpi marketing president Sue Kroll and her team appropriated a train in France, decked it out in Harry Potter livery and, in association with French trains operator Sncf, took it on a 10-city, two-week tour departing from the Gare du Nord.

The train housed press junkets and doubled up as a travelling public museum. The stunt made the local TV news, a valuable asset given the lack of TV advertising in France.

'With every Harry Potter release we try to do a big event based around a train and this year we found something that motivated the press and captured the public's imagination,' Kroll says.

'We co-ordinate with our domestic counterparts to see when the talent will be available to do junkets and press. Because the release was (virtually) day-and-date we were able to secure their availability and build out around that.'

For The Simpsons, Fox's Tomas Jegeus and his cohorts paid tribute to the ancient Cerne Abbas Giant in the UK county of Dorset by creating a giant chalk drawing of Homer Simpson next to it.

'We don't use the formats as they are - we create new things,' Jegeus says. 'We had live Bart and Homer projections running across walls in several cities around the world. The way it used to work with just a trailer and a poster just doesn't work any more. It just gets lost.'

Dynamic markets still emerging

While the UK and other major European territories - as well as Japan and Australia - remain lucrative, the most dynamic emerging markets by popular consensus are Russia, China, South Korea, and parts of Latin America.

'These regions have all expanded significantly,' says Sony's Mark Zucker, noting particular progress also in Poland and Venezuela. 'You've got people spending more money and there's a healthy bout of multiplex construction, so more people can get into theatres to see the movies.'

'Russia is a top-10 market for us now,' says Walt Disney's Anthony Marcoly, stating a fact echoed by other distributors. 'Pirates was the biggest film ever there, taking $30.6m, while China has had its biggest summer ever with Pirates grossing $16m and Spider-Man and Transformers also performing exceptionally well.'

As an adjunct to this, Wbpi's momentous $10.9m Italian launch of Harry Potter in Italy in the usually barren month of July has sparked a collective raising of the eyebrows.

'We will continue to release our films in the summer there, but only when it makes sense,' Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, president of distribution, says. 'If we have day-and-date films where it doesn't make sense to hold a release until September, then we will do so.'

'I think everyone is looking at releasing more films in the summer in Italy now and making it a 52-week calendar there,' Jegeus notes. 'We released Fantastic Four there day-and-date with the US (June 15) and it worked out. We're going to try to do that more and more.'

Local language product feels the squeeze

Hollywood beat local language fare this summer, but in most territories local productions steer clear of their US rivals until the summer is over.

As Sony's Mark Zucker points out, South Korea and Japan provided some of the sturdiest home-grown competition, while Germany didn't deliver a big comedy this summer. Wbpi's Veronika Kwan-Rubinek notes that France and Italy are yet to release a big local film during the summer months.

The two big South Korean hits were sci-fi tale D-War which, as of September 2, stood at $51.6m (won48.4bn), and the historical saga May 18, which by the same date had amassed $44.9m (won42.1bn). Transformers ranked in between the two on $50.7m (won47.2bn). Japanese local hits included Pokemon ($39m-plus) and Monkey Magic ($33m-plus).