It’s been a good year for Hollywood. Heading into 2008, many were worried the film industry would sag without recognizable franchises powering the revenue-rich summer months. 2007 had Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Shrek, and Spider-Man. All 2008 had was The Dark Knight. Well, not to overstate the success of Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to 2004’s Batman Begins, but TDK may have been all 2008 needed. The film’s record-breaking $531 million domestic gross fueled a year where the domestic box office broke records of its own. Ticket sales for the year hit $9.63 billion, up from last year’s $9.62 billion. Admissions were down 4% from last year’s 1.4 billion though, a disparity that is explained by rising ticket prices. Still, considering how badly the rest of the economy did, many pundits view the banner year as unquestionably positive. News from the international scene was stellar too, as foreign grosses hit a new high of $9.9 billion, up 4% from last year’s overseas take.

The one sore spot was in the DVD market, where sales fell 5.5% to $22.4 billion. Despite Blu-Ray’s threefold increase in profits to $750 million, the overall home video market is definitely struggling. But again, the economy’s historic collapse probably has a lot to do with this dip in numbers, as retail spending suffered across various industries. The 9.654 million BD players sold this year (with a good chunk of it coming during the holiday season) does hold promise for the next-gen format, so hopefully 2009 will become the year of Blu.

So what were the films that led to the billions Hollywood made in 2008? That’s what we here at cinema, verytasty set out to discover. When we went looking for the most profitable films of 2008, we used a fairly basic formula: B.O. Gross (domestic and worldwide) + DVD Gross (including BD sales) – Budget = Profit. Granted the numbers may not be totally accurate (studios have different ways of calculating grosses and budgets, marketing costs aren’t taken into account, and accurate DVD grosses are historically hard to get a hold of), but we feel like the information we found allowed us to paint a pretty clear picture of the 10 movies that earned the most money in 2008. For those interested, we got our numbers from Box Office Mojo and The Numbers (which estimates DVD sales figures based on studio figures, publicly available data, and private research on retail sales carried out by Nash Information Services). The movie sitting at the top of the list is pretty obvious, but continue reading to see which movies filled out the rest of the top 10.

Note: All numbers are in millions.

So there you have it. It’s interesting to note that two of the entries (Madgascar: Escape 2 Africa and Quantum of Solace) haven’t even had DVD releases yet and still managed to make the top 10 list. Meanwhile, Mamma Mia! (which became the highest grossing film in U.K. history, beating out Titanic) and Sex and the City relied on relatively low budgets in addition to high ticket and DVD sales to power them onto the list. It should be noted here that films like High School Musical 3, which already made $243 million in its worldwide box office take, and Twilight, which has made $278.7 million, could end up being two of the most profitable films when all is said and done. HSM3 cost a paltry $11 million while Twilight cost $37 million, and the two movies are sure to move tons of units on DVD. And that’s the one flaw of this list–it takes into account DVD sales when different movies have had varying amounts of time to sell said DVDs and some aren’t even on DVD yet.

Still, it offers a fairly good look at how audiences received films throughout 2008. And judging by the numbers, I think it’s safe to say The Dark Knight was the film that most captured the zeitgeist. If you want to see the chart with the worldwide box office numbers broken down into domestic and international numbers as well, click here. As the new year settles in, let’s hope 2009 sees an equally entertaining batch of movies released, both for our sakes and the film industry’s. Happy New Year and Happy Filmgoing!

Tags: Hancock, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar 2: Escape To Africa, Mamma Mia!, Quantum of Solace, Sex and the City, The Dark Knight, Top 10 List, Top Ten List, WALL-E