Top 10 grossing movies of 2013

1. "Iron Man 3"

Domestic gross: $409 million
Foreign gross: $800M
Reported cost: $200M
Even if Disney’s Marvel is downplaying the production cost — and Robert Downey Jr. is getting a huge cut of the profits — this is clearly a home run, with nearly twice the worldwide gross of “Iron Man 2.”

2. "Despicable Me 2"

Domestic gross: $367M
Foreign gross: $551M
Reported cost: $76M
A smash. Illumination Entertainment makes its animated features for a fraction of what it costs Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks, which typically spend $200 million or more. It’s a bonanza for Universal.

3. "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire"

Domestic gross: $358M
Foreign gross: $372M
Reported cost: $110M
Still going strong at the box office, this will shortly pass “Despicable Me 2” for second place in North America, though it may not match the $408M domestic take for its predecessors. Even with a substantial budget increase (from $78 million), it’s still a big winner for Lionsgate.

4. "Man of Steel"

Domestic gross: $291M
Foreign gross: $371M
Reported cost: $225M
This reboot to the 2006 reboot “Superman Returns” grossed almost 50 percent more domestically, yet will probably have to depend on ancillary markets like video for most of its profits. Warner Bros. hopes the sequel, teaming Superman with Ben Affleck’s Batman, will be more successful.

5. "Monsters University"

Domestic gross: $268M
Foreign gross: $475M
Reported cost: No official number, but almost certainly north of $200M.
The box-office numbers are none too shabby for this belated Pixar sequel, but the lion’s share of Disney’s profits on animated titles come from merchandising.

6. "Gravity"

Domestic gross: $252M
Foreign gross: $389M
Reported cost: $100M
An expensive Best Picture Oscar campaign will eat up some of the profits, but Warner Bros. will be counting revenues for decades to come from this groundbreaking classic and surprise hit.

7. "Fast & Furious 6"

Domestic gross: $238M
Foreign gross: $550M
Reported cost: $160M
Universal’s franchise just keeps speeding along with the year’s second-biggest foreign gross against a relatively modest budget for a blockbuster. But Paul Walker’s death will delay the seventh installment originally planned for next summer.

8. "Oz: The Great and Powerful"

Domestic gross: $234M
Foreign gross: $253M
Reported cost: $215M
Sounds like a smash hit, right? Not when you factor in a gigantic promotional budget, Disney’s hopes of matching the billion-dollar worldwide gross of “Alice in Wonderland,” and the studio’s hopes of launching a lucrative franchise out of “Oz.”

9. "Star Trek: Into Darkness"

Domestic gross: $228M
Foreign gross: $238M
Reported cost: $190M
This slightly underperformed its reboot predecessor domestically ($238M) but made up the difference overseas. Still, not quite the blockbuster that Paramount was hoping for from its oldest franchise.

10. "World War Z"

Domestic gross: $202M
Foreign gross: $337M
Reported cost: $190M (but could be more than $250M)
Reshoots pushed the film out of a planned Christmas 2012 release, and there are rather loud whispers that “Z” actually ended up costing more than $250 million. So it’s anyone’s guess whether this is in profit — but complex international financing deals may explain why Paramount thought it worthwhile to greenlight a sequel (even if they didn’t renew producer-star Brad Pitt’s first-look deal with the studio). In any event, this and “Star Trek” will likely fall off the top-10 list soon, thanks to grosses being rolled up by the recently opened “Frozen” and “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”

* As strange as it sounds, one or two of these top-grossing movies may not actually be in profit. Promotion costs, bonuses awarded to top actors and payouts to financing entities, among other factors, eat into grosses and aren’t reported publicly. So nobody except studio accountants knows exactly how much, if anything, these movies actually made.

Numbers source: boxofficemojo.com