The other day I was partaking in what's become my unemployment past-time: sitting in the hot tub, smoking down a fat cognac-dipped Gurka, generally celebrating the fact that PITTSBURGH'S GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL AND THEY'RE BLOODY TAKING ME WITH 'EM, and reading the ultimate hot tub magazine, Entertainment Weekly. Why is EW the ultimate hot tub magazine? Because you're done in 20 minutes, and if you accidentally drop it, it's probably just as well.
In this issue, tucked behind the obligatory "Oh my god! Your Orlando Bloom cover was so dreamy! Next time, make him take his shirt off!" letters, was a table showing the final box office receipts in 2005. Worldwide receipts generally beat American receipts by a 4:5 ratio. The top- and bottom-five films are fairly representative:
| Film (not counting active releases) | U.S. (in millions) | Rest of World (in millions) |
| Star Wars | $380 | $668 |
| Harry Potter | 284 | 582 |
| War of the Worlds | 234 | 357 |
| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | 206 | 267 |
| Elizabethtown | 26 | 24 |
| Serenity | 25 | 13 |
| Dark Water | 25 | 24 |
| Unleashed | 24 | 26 |
| Elektra | 24 | 32 |
Being a data geek, I looked for anomalies in the pattern. I didn't have to look hard.
| Film (not counting active releases) | U.S. (in millions) | Rest of World (in millions) |
| Get Rich or Die Tryin' | $31 | 1.5 |
| Beauty Shop | 36 | 0.9 |
| Diary of a Mad Black Woman | 50.4 | 0.02 [sic] |
| Coach Carter | 67 | 9.4 |
| Are We There Yet? | 80 | 31 |
Wow. Talk about your color lines. The only comparably performing film with a white headliner is "Because of Winn-Dixie" at $33/0.9. Walk the Line is at an eye-popping $98/0.4, but it's still in release, so those numbers might change as markets are added. What all this says I don't know, but the economic lesson is clear: if you're writing a script for world consumption, think twice before making the characters southern or black.