20th Century Fox sets global box-office record

Film studio 20th Century Fox movies grossed $5.5 billion in global ticket sales in 2014, breaking the record previously held by Paramount Pictures.

Buoyed by hits including “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” the Century City studio’s worldwide total sailed past the previous record held by Paramount, which hauled in $5.17 billion in 2011.

Fox’s domestic total came in at $1.79 billion, which was not a industry record but topped rival studios. It’s also Fox’s best-ever tally in the U.S. and Canada, not adjusting for inflation, and a significant improvement over the previous three years. The highlights for Fox came as the industry’s total revenue ended more than 5% lower than in 2013.

Internationally, the company set a new industry benchmark with $3.73 billion.

The latest “X-Men” franchise installment, directed by Bryan Singer, was the studio’s biggest film of the year, landing at $748 million worldwide, followed by the “Planet of the Apes” sequel’s $709 million.

Eight movies distributed by Fox took in more than $100 million or more domestically, including “Gone Girl,” “The Maze Runner” and “The Fault in Our Stars.”

Some of the studio’s big-budget projects didn’t fare as well stateside. Ridley Scott’s “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” for example, has grossed roughly $61 million in the U.S. and Canada so far.

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