Sony posts record global box office of $2.75 billion

Thanks in large measure to a certain web-slinging superhero, Sony Pictures is claiming a record global box office take for 2002, and that’s before the year’s final five weeks of lucrative holiday moviegoing. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Sony is claiming a worldwide take of more than $2.75 billion, breaking the record of $2.68 billion set by Twentieth Century Fox in 1998, when it earned $1.2 billion just from the international rights to ”Titanic.”

It’s only the latest record-breaking figure touted this year by Sony, which beat its own 1997 record of $1.26 billion in U.S. ticket sales in less than eight months this year. Much of the studio’s take this year was netted by ”Spider-Man,” which has earned $815 million in multiplexes worldwide, as well as a slate of hits that includes ”Men in Black II,” ”XXX,” and ”Panic Room.” Currently, the studio’s domestic take for the year stands at a record $1.48 billion, while the overseas take is $1.28 billion. That leaves one record that Sony may not be able to break. That’s Fox’s 1998 overseas earnings of $1.95 billion. To surpass that in the next five weeks, the web-slinger and his cohorts will have to make a titanic leap.