The Hobbit and the Importance of Foreign Box Office

With an overall gross of over 800 million, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug enjoys  great popularity with audiences. A closer look reveals that around 70% of it came from foreign box office, meaning from countries other than the US. Moreover, The Desolation of Smaug was the most dependent on overseas markets of all top 10 grossers in 2013.

Whether you look at Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2, or Thor: The Dark World, the ten highest grossing films of 2013 made more money overseas than in the US. It is no surprise that movie marketing has changed accordingly. Keely Gillman, president of consumer insights at Worldwide Motion Picture Group, told The Wrap: “In the past these movies would have been packaged to look American. Now they play up the universality of the stories or the themes.”

Without the acknowledgment of overseas markets, some movies might have “taken a beating otherwise” as Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak explains.

Curtesy of thewrap.com

Total Gross for The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug (February 17th 2014) :
Total:             $860,431,641
Domestic:    $256,231,641              29.8%
Foreign:        $604,200,000              70.2%