It doesn’t look like Doctor Strange has earned any more money since last week’s report so with that, I’m calling the 2016 comic movie run complete. Now, that means we can do a final look at 2016 and how the year compare’s to years past before moving on to 2017 next week!

Winners

• Captain America: Civil War ruled the year earning $1.15 billion to be the top grossing film of 2016. That’s the highest grossing Captain America film so far.
• Deadpool was one of the must successful films of the year earning $783 million it had a 13.5 multiplier for its budget. With a budget of just $58 million, the film shows you don’t need to spend a lot of money to find success.

Mixed

• DC Comics films – For as much shit thrown at Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, the films earned $873 million and $745 million and beat the average Marvel film at the domestic box office. Those are impressive numbers they just didn’t meet random expectations. Still, mixed reviews clearly didn’t sink these films. Where DC/Warner Bros. needs to work is at the foreign box office where their films lag Marvel’s. Boost earnings there and it’s a whole new ball game.
• Doctor Strange – The film earned $232.6 million domestically and $444.9 internationally, both are well below Marvel’s averages. But, when you take out the universe’s billion dollar films and look at other debuts, this movie was right where you’d expect.

Losers

• X-Men: Apocalypse – The film was a dud domestically earning $155 million and 71.42% of its earnings coming from the international box office. It earned $200 million less than X-Men: Days of Future Past. While a lot did come in, this film definitely placed the franchise on shakier ground. When Deadpool crushed this film with 1/3 the budget, it’s time to rethink the X franchise.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows – The film earned half of what 2014’s film earned and didn’t even cross $100 million domestically. Adjusting for inflation this film was the second worst film when it comes to domestic earnings.

How does 2016 compare to previous years?

2016 saw more than $5 billion dollars in earnings for the 8 comic adaptations that were released, the most money ever earned. That beats 2012 which saw $4.1 billion. But, what’s interesting is that record was driven by domestic earnings which saw a record $1.9 billion. Internationally, the year was the second highest earnings of $3.1 billion. The record was $3.2 billion in 2014.

You can see from below how much the adaptation of comic films has exploded in recent years, not just in the volume, but also how much money is being earned.

We’ll have a deeper examination of the year that was in an upcoming article.