10 years ago (probably even maybe 5) a movie’s success solely relied on how it performed at the domestic box office. The U.S. market was king when it came to influencing what studios did and didn’t decide to put out. If they wanted to justify investing into another franchise, the first movie in the film series had to perform well in America. Otherwise, they had to turn to new projects.

     However, that is no longer the case and as foreign consumers(especially the Chinese market) are allowing more and more films to be screened in their countries, the influence of the U.S. is slowly but surely diminishing. Let’s take a look at two very recent examples…

     First off, is Tom Cruise’s new movie The Mummy which came out just a few weeks ago. On Box Office Mojo the production budget is listed as $125 million. That number usually doesn’t include marketing so you have to factor in, on average, another $30-40 million. So… all in all the moviecost the studio around $165 million. Then, the theatre takes around 20-25% of the box office returns. Taking all of this into account, The Mummy most likely had to bring in around $220 million for Universal to break even. Keep in mind that they are planning a whole monster universe around this first movie so Universal really needed this one to succeed. So far, it’s made about $69 million domestically. Considering those costs, that’s a pretty big failure. If you take a look at the worldwide box office(including the U.S.) it’s racked in a total of around $345 million. It’s weird to think but even though The Mummy may feel like a failure on the surface, we have to remember that the film industry is now growing on a global scale.

     Another film where this is the case is the new Transformers: The Last Knight. Box Office Mojo lists that budget as $217 million with a domestic weekend debut of $68 million. Looking again to the foreign market, it almost grossed $200 million abroad for a worldwide total of $268 million. The past 3 Transformers all debuted at around $100 million domestically. It’s clear that there’s definitely a decline in the U.S. box office for the franchise and that’s something studios usually don’t like seeing. However, unlike before, the foreign market can be a huge factor and generate a lot of profits for the studios.

     It’s going to be interesting to see if this trend continues. I’m betting it’s only going to increase from here. Soon enough, studios are going to be turning their heads away from the U.S. , opting to focus on the markets abroad. Hollywood is no longer king of the movie industry. As time passes, Hollywood’s influence is going to span across the entire globe.