When all is said and done for movies in 2013, and the Academy has handed out every last gold-covered chocolate statue for the Best Picture and Best Actor and everyone has clapped the loudest for German actor Dieter Pfaff during the In Memoriam segment, perhaps the biggest achievement of this year will have been the box office success of World War Z. In the last week or so, the Brad Pitt zombie action film managed to crack the $500 million mark worldwide, and that’s notable not just because this movie seemed like a textbook failure from Day One, but also because it’s the first Brad Pitt film to ever do that.
Prior to WWZ, Pitt’s highest grossing film worldwide was the 2004 Ancient Greece war epic Troy ($497 million), while his biggest domestic box office performance was the 2005 action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which hauled in $186 million in the U.S. and $478 million globally. Smith was also Pitt’s biggest box office opening, as people shelled out $50 million to see him star opposite the woman that stole him away from Jennifer Aniston, which was, of course, the most important story of 2005 and perhaps the entire 00s.
And now it’s World War Z, the movie that cause countless fanboys and especially me freak out because it wasn’t staying true to the Max Brooks book that we all love so much, that has set the bar the highest for Pitt, with its $66 million opening weekend, $197 million domestic and $502 million worldwide grosses. I wonder what Pitt thinks about all of that…
(Chart via Box Office Mojo, H/T to the L.A. Times)