Domestic box office is the money a film takes from ticket sales in North America — the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico — while worldwide box office is that domestic figure plus every other territory on earth added together. The difference is not a different kind of measurement; worldwide is simply domestic plus international, which is why a film can look modest on one chart and enormous on the other. That arithmetic matters more than it sounds, because the international side of the ledger is now roughly three times the size of the domestic side. A reader who judges a film's performance by its North American number alone is reading about a quarter of the story, and sometimes far less than that.
Table of Contents
- What each term actually counts
- How big is the gap in practice?
- Neither number is what the studio keeps
- Why trackers disagree, and by how much
- Reading a milestone announcement
- Frequently Asked Questions
What each term actually counts
"Domestic" is a trade convention, not a national one. Box Office Mojo and IMDbPro define domestic as gross box-office revenue from North America — the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico — and treat "international" as everything not covered by that figure, as set out in IMDbPro's box office glossary. So a Canadian ticket counts as domestic even though Canada is a separate country.
Worldwide gross is the sum of those two columns and nothing more. The Numbers' glossary of movie business terms defines worldwide box office as domestic plus international, and the major trackers build their worldwide line the same way — by adding the two numbers beside it. That means you can always recover one figure from the other two. If a site gives you worldwide and domestic, international is the subtraction; there is no hidden third bucket.
How big is the gap in practice?
At market level the imbalance is stark. Gower Street Analytics put 2025 global box office at about $33.55 billion, while Comscore reported the U.S. and Canada total at $8.87 billion, up 1.5% on 2024 — North America accounting for a little over a quarter of all tickets sold worldwide. Individual films follow the same shape.
"Avatar: Fire and Ash" had taken $404,340,010 domestic and $1,086,046,702 international for a worldwide total of $1,490,386,712 — a domestic share of 27.1% — according to The Numbers' figures for the film, as of its mid-April 2026 update. For films produced outside the United States the gap can be near-total. Box Office Mojo's page for "Ne Zha 2" shows $23,308,176 domestic against $2,236,514,241 international, for $2,259,822,417 worldwide — a domestic share of about 1%, with almost all of the rest earned in China. A domestic-only chart would barely register one of the highest-grossing films ever released.
Neither number is what the studio keeps
Box office is the money audiences hand to cinemas, not the money a studio banks. Theatres keep a substantial share of every admission, and the split varies by territory and by how long a film has been playing. The scale of that cut is visible in exhibitor accounts.
AMC Entertainment reported film exhibition costs of $949.3 million against $1,951.2 million of admissions revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2025 — roughly 49% of ticket money passed back to distributors, with the remainder staying with the chain. International splits are generally less favourable to studios than domestic ones, so a film that earns most of its gross abroad converts a smaller proportion of that headline figure into studio revenue. Two films with identical worldwide totals can return very different amounts depending on where the tickets were sold.
Why trackers disagree, and by how much
International totals are assembled from dozens of territories reporting in local currencies on different schedules. Figures are revised as late reports arrive and as exchange rates are restated, so the number you read today may not be the number filed next month. The disagreements are not trivial.
The Numbers' page for "Ne Zha 2" listed the film at $2,003,786,333 worldwide while Box Office Mojo showed $2,259,822,417 — a quarter-billion-dollar spread on the same film. The two trackers differed by about $9 million on "Avatar: Fire and Ash," a much smaller but still real gap. Practical consequences for anyone comparing films:.
- Compare like with like. Take both films' numbers from the same tracker on the same day, or the comparison is meaningless.
- Treat domestic figures as firmer than international ones. North American reporting is daily and in one currency.
- Expect worldwide totals to move upward for weeks after a wide release, especially for films with staggered territory rollouts.
- Check the date stamp on any figure before quoting it.
Reading a milestone announcement
Studios and trade outlets quote all three figures at once, which is a useful habit to copy. Boxoffice Pro reported that Disney placed "Avatar: Fire and Ash" at $306 million domestic and $777.1 million international for a $1.083 billion global cume as of January 4, 2026, with China alone contributing $138 million, in its coverage of the film crossing a billion dollars. The single-territory breakout in that announcement is the part worth noticing.
One market supplying $138 million of a $1.083 billion total tells you something a worldwide figure alone conceals — that performance abroad is itself uneven, and concentrated in a handful of large markets. Because the two charts rank differently, forecasters quote global separately rather than extrapolating from North America. Gower Street cut its 2026 global box office forecast to $34.7 billion, as reported by Screen Daily — a number that says nothing directly about where the domestic market will land that year.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a film's domestic total include Mexico?
No. Despite being part of North America geographically, Mexico counts as international under the trade definition. IMDbPro's glossary limits domestic to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.
Why do some films have a tiny domestic number but a huge worldwide one?
Because they were made for another market. "Ne Zha 2" earned about 1% of its $2.26 billion worldwide gross domestically, with nearly all the rest coming from China.
Can I work out international gross myself?
Yes — subtract domestic from worldwide. Worldwide is defined as the sum of the two, so the subtraction is exact for any single tracker's figures.