It seems this list defines "best" as most profitable for the studios. The top 4 will easily surpass the 500 million mark. But I define best as "quality" so I would add in films such as Django Unchanied Argo Wettest County in the World

[...] The ten best studio films of 2012? (gointothestory.blcklst.com) [...]

I'd put the Dark Knight Rises in 1st, purely based on probabilities. I think currently Nolan's track record / the characters and their appeal to audiences / buzz all trump those of Jackson and Scott. Not saying it will be the best, but I think it has the biggest probability to be the best.

I would have to go with: 1.) The Master 2.) The Dark Knight Rises 3.) Django Unchained 4.) Dark Shadows 5.) Moonrise Kingdom 6.) The Hobbit 7.) Lincoln 8.) The Avengers 9.) Gravity 10.) The Great Gatsby

I wrote the original piece and want to clarify that the list is based on this: "the ten studio films we're most excited to see --along with cause for concern, which we rank from #10 - high to #1 - low." The complete article explains best: http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/great-expectations-predicting-the-ten-best-of-2012s-studio-fare-will-they-deliver For this article, we only included big studios, not The Weinstein Co. That's why Django Unchained, Wettest County and The Master weren't included. All three would be on my less specific list of the ten films I'm most excited to see this year.

Thanks, Sophia, for that clarification. When you titled the article "studio films," I think we all pretty much figured you meant the major studios. I will be especially curious to see if we have anything like we did in 2010 when several adult dramas like The Social Network, The King's Speech, True Grit, and The Fighter became break-out hits. Weren't as many in 2011 and I think that contributed to the decline in ticket sales. Granted none of those was Transformer 3 in terms of B.O., but cumulatively the adult crowd, which has more allegiance toward movies for their entertainment compared to younger audiences, is still a sizable demo group. We shall see! Thanks again for dropping by.