They were continually being called on the carpet for hearings and being forced to explain how it was that they made so much money, and why the price of gas was skyrocketing.

The concept of profit margin btw, is not in the vocabulary of many socialists. For them all they ever see is huge “windfall” profits that these greedy executives, CEO’s, investors and speculators are racking in year after year.

Ok, so they want to tax these companies.

Well go ahead, and while your at it let’s tax some of the left’s supporters. How about taxing the windfall profits of the entertainment industry?

I did a small bit of research and I found some very interesting numbers, started crunching said numbers, and was amazed at what some of these companies in the entertainment business were racking in over a period of time.

Below are the top ten and their gross take up to that point.

Movie Title Weekend Gross (this year so far)

Burn after Reading 19.9 Mil 19.9 Mil

The Family That Preys 17.4 Mil 17.4 Mil

Righteous Kill 16.3 Mil 16.3 Mil

The Women 10.1 Mil 10.1 Mil

Tropic Thunder 4.8 Mil 103.0 Mil

The House Bunny 4.15 Mil 42.0 Mil

The Dark Knight 4.13 Mil 512.0 Mil

Bangkok Dangerous 2.59 Mil 12.7 Mil

Traitor 2.30 Mil 20.7 Mil

Death Race 2.06 Mil 33.2 Mil

I have never been very good in math, so I got out the old calculator (ok I used the one on the laptop), and added these numbers up. Go ahead, do it yourself. However, I will save you the time. Here is the total gross year to date for just these top ten movies;

787.3 Million Dollars. Yes, that is MILLION dollars.

Now keep in mind these are just box office receipts. To my knowledge, none of these movies has been released on DVD. Therefore, these figures are only for the movies themselves.

None of this includes the spin-off industries that will follow on the heels of these successes. For example I mentioned above; DVD’s. Surely, those will wrack in millions of bucks. Oh and there are movie soundtrack CD’s, along with additional sales to the various performers who because they had a song in that movie will no doubt spark people into buying that particular performer’s, or group’s CD.

How about video games for the gaming industry from those top ten movies? I am certain that for the movie Dark Knight that some company will produce a video game.

“Grand Theft Auto IV--6,293,000 units sold (despite the fact that the game was only released in late April in the U.S. and U.K. and has yet to hit the Japanese market)
Super Smash Bros. Brawl--5,433,000 units sold
Mario Kart Wii--4,697,000 units sold
Wii Fit--3,604,000 units sold
Guitar Hero III--3,475,000 units sold

That's 23,502,000 units sold just for the top five games in the U.S., U.K., and Japan only.”

23.5 Million games in only five countries, is astounding. But wait I have not computed the gross take on these games yet. Assuming an average price of one of these games is about $50.00 USD. Now multiply that by the total sales of the top selling game and we have… Viola 314.6 MILLION USD in sales! And that is for just one game.

Wow the entertainment industry is starting to add up!

So lets us move along now to the Music industry.

It is now Number crunching time again.

I am going to use an artist named Josh Groban. Now admittedly I have never heard his material, but he produced a very popular Christmas album entitled; Noel, which sold around 3.7 million copies.

Again using Amazon.com for a sample price, the CD sold for around 12.99. Do the math. Oh never mind I did it for you. The total is around 48 MILLION USD.

That is only one album folks. Mr. Groban has many more albums. And while I don’t know if they are as successful as this one I am no doubt certain that other musicians have done just as well if not better for themselves and the industry.

Moving right along, let us take one of our country’s most beloved companies; The Disney Company.

According to Hoovers.com the Disney Company earned during the fiscal year of 2007 35,510 x 1,000,000 dollars. Oops calculator time again, that totals, hmmm move a decimal here, and ah heck I cheated. 3.551 BILLION dollars.

Alright I know that this is not the best or most scientific analyisis but I believe you get my point.

Let us recap here, using my trusty computer calculator

Movie industry 787 million

Gaming industry 314 million

Music Industry 48 million

One Entertainment Giant 3 billion

The grand total, based on admittedly limited information is 36,659,000,000 Billion Dollars.

Oh how I’d love to see a commercial that would go something like this;

Movies close to 800 million

Games close to 314 million

Music close to 50 million

Disney close to 3 billion

The looks on the faces of major CEO’s should they ever be called into congress to explain their outrageous and obscene windfall profits… priceless