And this now brings us to the year’s end, with the final slate for December including Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables, the Brad Pitt-starrer World War Z, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, and Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.
Of all of December’s films, however, I think there’s only one strong candidate to be joining the club, and that is of course Peter Jackson’s return to Middle-earth with The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
All three of his The Lord of the Rings films are in the top twenty-five highest-grossing films, with the finale, Return of the King, sitting at 5th place, comfortably passing the $1bn. mark. And like with The Amazing Spider-Man, The Hobbit also has the potential benefit of 3D on its side, coupled with the audience already in place, and so there’s every chance that it will be joining the club. With its release coming on 14th December, however, it’s worth noting that it will probably be doing so after the New Year, in 2013, and so whilst it does definitely make my list of predictions, it might technically be gaining entry to the club next year.
So my final predictions will have to be, in order of release date:
- (Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace 3D)
- The Avengers
- The Amazing Spider-Man
- Ice Age: Continental Drift
- The Dark Knight Rises
- The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2
- (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)
It’s a club that is both elusive and exclusive. As is evident from its current members being limited to a number of ten, there are clearly very, very few who make it onto the guest list. Last year saw three new inductions that brought the total number of films in the club to double-digits. And whilst my predictions do have six possibilities (excluding Star Wars) that I think could go from nought to a billion, if I were to really put my money where my mouth is, I think I’d have to slim my list down to just three again this year: The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (in early 2013).
However things play out for these films though, as well as the dozens of other brilliant films due out this year, one thing can be said for sure: we have so much to look forward to from the film industry in the coming year. Whether or not we see a few new inductions to the $1bn. club (and I’m optimistic that we will), here’s to hoping that 2012 will be a big success for films both critically and commercially across the board.
About Kenji Lloyd
