Where the Data Ranks 2016’s Comic Book Films

The summer movie season is wrapping up and we’ve seen an interesting year when it comes to comic book films. For months debates have raged as to who is more successful, Marvel or DC, which movies were successes, and which were flops. The answers aren’t so simple and black and white, which is why I like to turn to data to give actual rankings as to who were winners and losers.

So far this year, seven films have been released based on comic books (counting Batman: The Killing Joke). This feature will be weekly until the end of the year, as some films are still in the box-office and there’s till more to come.

Doctor Strange has now been added to these stats, so expect things to shift a lot while that film goes through its theatrical run.

Of note:

  • Suicide Squad now stands at $745.6 million. It’s $2.3 million shy of X-Men: Days of Future Past‘s worldwide gross. The film earned a couple hundred thousand over the past week and will end up around $746 to $747 million.
  • Doctor Strange will pass X-Men: Apocalypse‘s domestic gross sometime this week. The film will also pass $500 million worldwide this week as well.
  • DC’s films continue to expand the gap when it comes to average domestic earning compared to Marvel. DC’s three films average $315.5 million a film domestically compared to Marvel’s $296.8 million. Internationally, Marvel earns $469.6 million and DC earns $446.8 million.

Here’s where this year’s movie crop stands as far as the actual numbers. Numbers are presented with and without The Killing Joke which did not have an international run, so was not included in that average to start:

Total Domestic Gross: $1.821 billion ($1.817 billion without Killing Joke)
Total International Gross: $3.020 billion
Worldwide Gross: $4.841 billion ($4.837 billion without Killing Joke)
Total Reported Budgets: $1.215 billion ($1.211 billion without Killing Joke)
Total “Profit”: $3.626 billion ($3.625 billion without Killing Joke)

Average Domestic Gross: $227.6 million ($259.6 million without Killing Joke)
Average International Gross: $431.4 million
Average: Worldwide Gross: $605.1 million ($691 million without Killing Joke)
Average Budget: $151.8 million ($173 million without Killing Joke)
Average Profit: $453.3 million ($518 million without Killing Joke)

Now that we have those numbers down we can get a better idea as to how films have actually done this year. Below are various rankings of where films stand so far and if the films are above average (green) or below average (red):

comic-films-11-14-1 comic-films-11-14-2 comic-films-11-14-3 comic-films-11-14-4 comic-films-11-14-5


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