Thanks to monster hits like “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1” and art-house breakouts such as “The Artist,” many of the major players in the independent film market racked up an impressive year despite the industry-wide box office decline.
The top seven indie studios grossed $1.57 billion at the domestic box office so far this year, compared to $1.52 billion in 2010, according to Boxofficemojo.com.
Theatrical revenues grew while studios continued to exploit video on demand and digital video as a new source of revenue. Barely a week goes by without one or more of the indies signing a new streaming pact with the likes of Netflix or Hulu.
So who’s leading the pack? Summit dominated market share thanks to the latest installment in its tween horror romance, “Twilight.” Relativity announced itself as a major player on the scene, but next year will need to find a new source of financial backing in order to stay there.
The Weinstein Co. re-emerged from its 2010 refinancing with the wind at its back thanks to Colin Firth’s stuttering monarch in “The King’s Speech.”
Fox Searchlight is translating the critical raves for Alexander Payne's "The Descendants" into solid box office returns.
New entrant FilmDistrict scored a low-budget hit with the $54 million domestic grossing horror film "Insidious," but overspent on Johnny Depp's "The Rum Diaries, with only a measly $13 million at the domestic box office to show for its troubles.
Likewise, Focus Features churned out a genre hit with the $40 million grossing "Hanna," but couldn't interest audiences in the $19.4 million grossing Roman epic "The Eagle."
Not every studio was a winner. Lionsgate, with a costly string of box office misses, saw its numbers fall to earth. But salvation may be just around the corner in the form of a certain dystopian young adult novel, “The Hunger Games.”
Here's a look at the top four indie studios:
SUMMIT
“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn -- Part 1” powered the studio’s slate, grossing a bloody good $658.4 million worldwide -- and counting -- on a $110 million budget. The finale to the sex and blood sucking series hits next summer, at which point the studio will be hard-pressed to find an equally profitable series of projects to replace it.
After all, that film accounted for more than 50 percent of Summit’s $1 billion worldwide gross.
The rest of Summit’s slate was something of a mixed bag. Cancer comedy “50/50” rode strong reviews to a $34.9 million domestic gross while “The Three Musketeers” deflected critical knocks to rack up $139 million worldwide. Also performing solidly was the mind-bending thriller “Source Code,” which generated $146.7 million globally on a $32 million budget.
However, Nicolas Cage’s “Drive Angry 3D” grossed a meager $10.7 million on a $9 million budget, and Mel Gibson’s “The Beaver” couldn’t overcome its star’s controversial public image to bank a dreadful $8.7
