2021 in film is an overview of events, including the highest-grossing films, award ceremonies, festivals, a list of country-specific lists of films released, and movie programming.
In his article highlighting the best movies of 2021, Richard Brody of The New Yorker said, "From an artistic perspective, 2021 has been an excellent cinematic vintage, yet the bounty is shadowed by an air of doom. The reopening of theatres has brought many great movies—some of which were postponed from last year—to the big screen, but fewer people to see them. The biggest successes, as usual, have been superhero and franchise films. The French Dispatch has done respectably in wide release, and Licorice Pizza is doing superbly on four screens in New York and Los Angeles, but few, if any, of the year’s best films are likely to reach high on the box-office charts. The shift toward streaming was already under way when the pandemic struck, and as the trend has accelerated it’s had a paradoxical effect on movies. On the one hand, a streaming release is a wide release, happily accessible to all (or to all subscribers). On the other, an online release usually registers as a nonevent, and many of the great movies hardly make a blip on the mediascape despite being more accessible than ever."[1]
Worldwide, the global box office ended the year at $21.4 billion, a figure 78% higher than 2020.[4]
China was the highest-grossing country of 2021 with $7.3 billion.[5]
In the United States and Canada, theaters earned an estimated $4.55 billion throughout 2021, a statistic 100% higher than 2020's $2.28 billion and 60% lower than 2019's $11.4 billion.[6]
Also, is the third film to surpass the $800 million mark in North America.
In Latin America, No Way Home became the all-time highest-grossing film in Mexico ($75 million), and the second all-time highest in Brazil ($55 million), Central America ($12.6 million) and Ecuador ($7.9 million).[9]
The Battle at Lake Changjin also became the second highest-grossing film in a single market, after Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) in the United States.[11][12]
Hi, Mom became the highest-grossing film by a solo female director, surpassing the record set by Wonder Woman (2017).[13]
The anime film Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) released in North America in April 2021, with its opening weekend gross of $19.5 million setting the record as the biggest opening for any foreign-language film released in North America.[16][dubious – discuss]
