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Milestones and Turning Points in Film History The Year 2010 |
 Timeline of Greatest Film History Milestones and Turning Points (by decade and year) Introduction | Pre-1900s | 1900s | 1910s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s 1960s | 1970s | 1980s | 1990s | 2000s | 2010s | 2020s |
| Event and Significance | |
| The US cinema industry made more than $11 billion in domestic box-office revenue in 2010, putting it in first place. Second was Japan with $2.5 billion, and India third with $2.2 billion. | |
| Director Tim Burton's meandering 3-D version of Alice in Wonderland (2010), starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, surpassed previous opening weekend records for both the first and second quarter of the year, at $116 million (domestic). It eventually took in $334 million, making it the 2nd highest-grossing (domestic) film of the year. It beat Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004) record of $83 million for the biggest opening of a film in the first quarter (winter) of the year, and the record of Fast and Furious (2009) as the biggest opening of a film in the spring quarter at $71 million. | |
| Johnny Depp was the highest-paid actor of the year ($75 million). | |
| Pixar's Toy Story 3 (2010) won the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar. Its two predecessors Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999) were released prior to the creation of the Best Animated Feature category, awarded for the film year 2001 for the first time. | |
| Toy Story 3 (2010) became the highest-grossing G-rated movie ever, and was the first 2010 release to take in over $400 million (domestic) at the box-office (eventually reaching $415 million). It became the highest grossing (domestic) animated movie on its opening day (at $41 million), beating the previous record set by Shrek the Third (2007) (at $38.4 million). It also set a record as the fastest animated film to reach $100 million box-office gross - in just 3 days (it was also the 5th fastest grossing movie ever). It topped the US box office in 2010 as the # 1 film, and had a worldwide total of over $1 billion. It was the second highest-grossing computer animation ($415 million (domestic)) to date, trailing Shrek 2 (2004). | |
| The summer's box-office in 2010 was mostly disappointing. It had the lowest movie theater attendance (at 552 million) in over a decade (since 1997's 540 million). However, annual ticket sales for the period increased 2% from the previous year, due in part to higher ticket prices, especially for 3-D presentations. The biggest surprise successes of the period were director Christopher Nolan's smart blockbuster hit Inception (2010), the remake Karate Kid (2010), Universal's Despicable Me (2010), Adam Sandler's Grown Ups (2010), and Will Ferrell's The Other Guys (2010) (the second-biggest opening of Ferrell's career). The top five films at the summer box-office were Pixar's Toy Story 3 (2010), Iron Man 2 (2010), The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), Inception (2010), and Shrek Forever After (2010). | |
| Yearly movie attendance was down from the previous year, based upon a 5.4% decline in ticket sales. It was the largest year-to-year drop since 2005. Film-going in 2010 was the second-lowest year of the entire decade. However, 2010 box-office ($10.56 billion) was only slightly below 2009's figures ($10.6 billion), due mostly to higher ticket prices for 3-D. Analysts blamed the poor recessionary economy and the glut of competing entertainment choices. | |
| The Saw series of seven horror films (from 2004-2010) regained its prominence as the highest-grossing horror film series, with the release of its 7th film in the gory series, Saw 3D (2010), surpassing the Friday the 13th franchise of 12 films, the previous record holder. The latest Saw film (Saw 3D (2010)) took in $45.7 million, giving the Saw franchise a grand total of $415.9 million by the year 2010. The total domestic gross for the 12 Friday the 13th films (from 1980-2009) was $380.6 million, boosted by the $65 million box-office gross for Friday the 13th (2009). The Saw films also exceeded the total domestic gross of the Scream series (1996-2011) of four films at $331.7 million. The 10 Halloween films (from 1978-2009) came in with a total domestic gross of about $308.5 million, while Nightmare on Elm Street's (from 1984-2010) series of 9 films grossed $370.5 million. | |
| Warner Bros. was the highest-grossing studio of 2010, with a market share of 18.2%, and total grosses of $1,923.9 million. | |
| The country of China limited only 20 pictures made outside its borders to play there each year. The top four most-popular Hollywood films that have opened in China so far include Avatar (2009) (the first film ever to earn $100 million in China), 2012 (2009), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), and Inception (2010). | |
| A federal judge in a US District Court ruled on a lawsuit brought against DreamWorks (and its founder Steven Spielberg) and Paramount, distributors of the film Disturbia (2007). The trust, which owned the rights to the 1942 short story written by Cornell Woolrich ("It Had to be Murder"), upon which Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) was adapted, claimed that Disturbia had used the story's plot without the trust's permission. In 2010, the judge decided that although there were some similarities between the original short story and the two films, none were actionable under copyright law. | |
| Producer/director Arthur Penn died at the age of 88 of heart failure. Originally in Hollywood's "New Wave" of directors, his best known film was Bonnie and Clyde (1967), and other films included The Miracle Worker (1962), Mickey One (1965), The Chase (1966), Alice's Restaurant (1969), Little Big Man (1970), and Night Moves (1975). His films in 1962, 1967, and 1969 were nominated for Best Director, but he never won. | |
| Actor Tony Curtis died at the age of 85 of cardiac arrest. He was most noted for his dramatic and comedic films, including Sweet Smell of Success (1957), The Defiant Ones (1958) (for which he received his sole career nomination, Best Actor), Some Like It Hot (1959), Spartacus (1960), Sex and the Single Girl (1964), and The Boston Strangler (1968). His marriage to fellow actress Janet Leigh led to the birth of daughter Jamie Lee Curtis. | |
| The national average ticket price for theatre admission was $7.85, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO). | |
| The Coen Brothers' PG-13 adventure remake True Grit (2010), starring Jeff Bridges, soon became the director duo's biggest hit, and the highest-grossing western since Wild Wild West (1999). | |
| Fans of perky actress Natalie Portman had been following her mature roles from an early age, first as Mathilde in Leon: The Professional (1994) and as Marty in Beautiful Girls (1996). She became known worldwide after Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), but came into her own with her lead Oscar-winning role as a troubled ballerina in Black Swan (2010). | |
| Computer programmer and entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg, the young founder of the social media website Facebook in 2004 and the subject of the film The Social Network (2010) made philanthropic headlines by donating $100 million of his personal Facebook stock on September 22, 2010 to the Newark, New Jersey school system, to possibly counteract the negative portrait presented of him in the film. Time Magazine named him Person of the Year for 2010. | |
| The Razzie Awards for the worst films of 2010 (awarded in 2011) included two films that had nine nominations each: 'Worst Picture' nominee The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010), and M. Night Shyamalan's The Last Airbender (2010) - which also had a nomination in a new category, 'Worst Eye-Gouging Mis-Use of 3-D'. | |
| According to Guinness World Records, 2010 was the most expensive year in Hollywood (to date). The 50 biggest blockbusters released by major Hollywood studios in 2010 cost a combined total of $5.2 billion - the highest total in one year in US cinematic history. | |
| Due to intense competition from Netflix, Redbox automated kiosks, and VOD (video on demand) services, Blockbuster video rental stores filed for bankruptcy protection in 2010. In 2011, the company was purchased by satellite provider Dish Network, and most of the stores were closed. | |
| The sequel Paranormal Activity 2 (2010) disproved the theory that you couldn't make a successful sequel to a scary "found footage" (faux documentary) film (such as The Blair Witch Project's sequel flop in 2000). It still had respectable domestic revenue at $84.7 million (and $177.5 million worldwide). | |
| Director Mike Newell's sword/sorcery fantasy-action film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010), based upon the 2003 videogame, was set in the desert. It performed poorly at the box-office and its production budget topped $200 million, surpassing Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001) with a budget of $137 million, as the most expensive film inspired by a video-game. Plans for a mega-franchise were postponed when receipts were tallied: $90.8 million (domestic) and $335.1 million (worldwide). It was, however, the highest-grossing video-game adaptation ever (worldwide), defeating the previous record holders Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), and Mortal Kombat (1995). |
