Warner Bros. has won the 2010 global box-office race, reporting a record $4.8 billion in worldwide grosses.
Already having claimed No. 1 status on Monday of a largely flat domestic market with a reported $1.9 billion in North American grosses, Warner also has staked the foreign-market crown, reporting a record $2.93 billion in overseas grosses.
For its part, Fox is also reporting just over $2.9 billion in overseas ticket sales, so the foreign-market crown could be open to debate. (Fox has yet to disclose its full year-end figures to TheWrap.)
Fox finished second in global market share in 2010, reporting more than $4.2 billion in worldwide, "Avatar"-driven receipts.
The Motion Picture Association of America will release official global, foreign and domestic market figures next month.
However, a number of research firms have already released figures noting that the domestic box office was narrowly — somewhere between $30 million to $50 million — shy of 2009's $10.6 billion record haul.
So how big will the global market be? Tough to say at this point exactly.
But with several studios including Warner — which was driven by international hits like "Inception" — reporting record foreign performances, the overall international market was up around 20 percent in 2010.
In fact, it was reported on Monday that China alone saw its box-office revenues spike 61 percent in 2010 to $1.47 billion.
With the foreign market so big this year, five of the six major studios have reported significant increases in global revenue performance, with only Sony reporting a decline.
Here's how studio performance broke down across domestic, foreign and global indexes, (with year-to-year percentage increases and decreases). All data was supplied by the studios themselves.
Rank/Studio Domestic Foreign Global
1.) Warner $1.88B (-11%) $2.93B (+53%) $4.83B (+20%)
2.) Fox $1.66B (flat) $2.9B+ (+16%) $4.56B (+11%)
3.) Disney $1.49B (+22%) $2.3B+ (+35%) $3.8B+ (+31%)
4.) Paramount $1.74B (+18%) $1.98B (+49%) $3.72B (+33%)
5.) Sony $1.27B (-13%) $1.4B+ (-37%) $2.67B (-24%)
6.) Universal $0.89B (flat) $1.2B+ (+11%) $2.1B+ (+5%)