Tim Burton’s (The Nightmare Before Christmas) adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s classic tale, Alice in Wonderland, is his seventh collaboration with Johnny Depp (Public Enemies); the duo’s previous work includes Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), and Sweeney Todd, among others; and is now on the verge of passing the $1billion threshold for Box Office takings.
After having premiered in London, back in February this year, the film has so far taken roughly $332million in the United States alone, $667million in the rest of the world (with Japanese sales accounting for a whopping $108million of that figure), and is still going fairly strong, three months later.
As it passes the billion-dollar mark, Alice will be entering a fairly exclusive club of only six members (which includes Alice); consisting of Avatar, Titanic (the first movie to break the, then momentous, barrier), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and The Dark Knight; despite being a fairly average family film, and far from Burton or Depp’s best work (singly or collaboratively).
This then begs the question as to whether or not that billion-dollar mark should still be held as such a highly regarded, goalpost, figure; because if an average movie, released neither during the summer blockbuster period, or the big Christmas movie season, can reach that figure as it has, then maybe that’s evidence enough that inflation, overpriced cinema tickets, and additional fees for 3D seats (even if, like Alice, the 3D effect was rendered after shooting, and to a lesser, yet cheaper, effect than films shot in 3D), mean that it’s now much easier to achieve the same revenue with less people going to watch than was needed back in 1997, when Titanic was released.
The follow up billion-dollar hits also prove that it’s becoming easier to hit the mark, as it took a full six years after Titanic first broke the barrier for a second film to make $1billion, and a further three years for the third film to do so, but since then, there has been a billion-dollar movie released every year for the past three years.
Nevertheless, despite the threshold becoming ever more attainable, there’s no denying that Alice in Wonderland has performed exceptionally well (by more than doubling the return of Depp/Burton’s next highest grossing collaboration; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), with it’s record breaking opening, and sustained interest meaning that it will probably remain a solid children’s hit for some time, and should be expected to have a very high performance when it’s released on Blu-ray and DVD next week.
