A look at the biggest box-office hits and flops of 2018:

HIT: “Black Panther”: On a budget of $210 million, Ryan Coogler’s superhero film — the first to feature a predominantly black cast — grossed more than $700 million domestically (third highest all-time, not accounting for inflation) and $1.3 billion worldwide. It became the first movie to top the weekend box office five times in a row since “Avatar.”

MISS: “Solo: A Star Wars Story”: Not everything Disney did in 2018 was perfect; “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms” and “A Wrinkle in Time” also fizzled. But few disappointments were more acutely felt than the extensively retooled Han Solo spinoff directed by Ron Howard after original directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were jettisoned. On a production budget of at least $250 million, the heavily promoted spinoff grossed $392.9 million worldwide. It did worse than every previous “Star Wars” film, and the negative reaction from fans and critics forced Disney to reconsider its future plans for the franchise.

HIT: “A Quiet Place”: With just a $17 million budget, John Krasinski’s horror thriller grossed $340.7 million worldwide. The Paramount Pictures release was the biggest original hit of a year typically dominated by sequels, superheroes and reboots. Of course, “A Quiet Place” will get its own sequel, slated for release in 2020.

MISS: “Mortal Engines”: One of the year’s worst bombs arrived just as 2018 was coming to a close. The Peter Jackson-produced $100 million fantasy, from Universal, opened with a mere $7.5 million last weekend. Young Adult fantasies aren’t selling like they used to, especially when they come with big budgets and a 27 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

HIT: “Crazy Rich Asians”: Rom-coms have for years been largely absent from theaters, but the Warner Bros. adaption of the best-selling novel grossed $238 million worldwide on a $30 million budget. As the first studio release in 25 years to feature a predominantly Asian-American cast, it was another example of how diversity sells at the box office.

MISS: “The Happytime Murders”: Who could have foreseen that an R-rated puppet comedy would disappoint? The STX Entertainment release starred one of the most bankable stars in comedy, Melissa McCarthy, but it has managed only $27.5 million worldwide on a $40 million budget.

HIT: “Incredibles 2”: Success is usually expected of Pixar; all but one of their 20 releases has opened No. 1 (and the one that didn’t, “Inside Out,” grossed $857.6 million globally). But even by their high standards, Brad Bird’s “Incredibles” sequel was a massive hit. With $1.24 billion in worldwide sales from a $200 million budget, “Incredibles 2” ranks second behind only “Frozen” among animated movies in ticket sales.

MISS: “Robin Hood”: Just as audiences didn’t want another “Girl in With the Dragoon Tattoo,” they had little interest in more Robin Hood. The Taron Egerton-led return to Sherwood Forest, released by Lionsgate, cost $100 million to make but made out with just $72.9 million worldwide.

HIT: “Halloween”: Horror continued to dominate the box office — the “Conjuring” spinoff “The Nun” also ranked as one of the year’s most lucrative hits. But Blumhouse’s “Halloween” sequel, 40 years after the original, grossed $253.5 million worldwide on a budget of just $10 million. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis, 60, it now holds the record for best opening weekend for a film with a female lead over 55.

MISS: “London Fields”: It cost a modest $8 million to make, but the long-delayed Martin Amis adaptation starring Amber Heard was among the most widely ignored films of the year. After being held up for years by lawsuits, it opened with just $160,000 on 613 screens — a per-screen average of $262. It ranks as among the worst performing wide releases ever.

NEW YORK — The movie theater was dead, they said. After ticket sales slumped in 2017, due largely to the worst summer season in more than a decade, pundits far and wide predicted the hastening demise of moviegoing, an inevitable casualty to the rise of streaming.

This year, the movies flipped the script.

This weekend, as “Aquaman,” ”Bumblebee” and “Mary Poppins Returns” arrive in theaters, ticket sales will reach a new record for the year, passing the previous 2016 high of $11.4 billion. Driven in part by zeitgeist-grabbing cultural events like “Black Panther,” ”Crazy Rich Asians” and even documentaries like “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” the box office is expected to end up around $11.8 billion for the year. The overall domestic gross is up nearly 9 percent from last year; ticket sales are up about 6 percent.

And it’s not just in North America. Propelled by Chinese moviegoers, global ticket sales should, for the second time ever, exceed $40 billion. Saudi Arabia declared itself open for business to Hollywood, after more than 35 years without theaters. In the United Kingdom, cinemas are headed to their best year since 1971.

“This year serves to confirm that the movie theater business is strong and growing in the long term, even though it can be cyclical in the short term,” said John Fithian, president of the National Organization of Theater Owners, the trade organization known as NATO. “Last summer of 2017, when there just weren’t very many movies coming out that had any traction, we confronted the inevitable story about the impending death of the movie theater business. And we said back then: It’s all about short-term product supply.”

“We knew that once the movies came back, we would be fine,” said Fithian.

Even in a year where “Star Wars” flopped, the hits have indeed returned, even if they’ve come from some predictable places. All of the year’s top 10 movies were either sequels, reboots or based on a comic book. Even this year’s Oscar front runner, “A Star Is Born” ($376.6 million worldwide and counting for Warner Bros.), is a remake. The top three films of the year — “Black Panther,” ”Avengers: Infinity War,” ”Incredibles 2″ — all come from market-leader Disney, which is also in the process of gobbling up 20th Century Fox.

But there were some less likely hits, too. Mid-budgeted films like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” ”Halloween,” ”Creed II” and the year’s best-selling original movie, “A Quiet Place,” had a significant role in driving the record box office. For the first time ever, four documentaries — “RBG,” ”Free Solo,” ”Three Identical Strangers,” ”Won’t You Be My Neighbor” — each cleared $10 million. Surprise successes — a franchise-birthing “Spider-Man” spinoff (“Venom”), a well-reviewed “Transformers” movie (“Bumblebee”) — outnumbered the disappointments (“Skyscraper,” ”Robin Hood”).

Above all, the movies were often in the center of the cultural conversation, never more so than with the history-making “Black Panther,” which became the third-highest grossing domestic release ever ($700.1 million) not accounting for inflation.

Hollywood executives say the year has demonstrated that 2017 was an aberration.

“When the experts out there were talking about the end of theatrical moviegoing, I just didn’t buy that to begin with,” said Jim Orr, distribution chief for Universal Pictures, which had hits in “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” ”The Grinch” and “Halloween.” ”It was just some scheduling moves that happened along with some movies that just underperformed. People want to go out. They want the social experience. They want to be in theaters. And we proved that exponentially this year.”

The box-office rebound came in a year during which Netflix launched its most ambitious original movie slate, premiering some 70 new films. Though Netflix this fall relented to a degree by playing three of its films (“Roma,” ”The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and “Bird Box”) exclusively in theaters before premiering on its streaming service, Netflix and exhibitors remain at odds over the benefits of the traditional theatrical window.

Yet there is a growing sense that Netflix may not be public enemy No. 1 for movie theaters, after all. In 2018, Netflix has gained millions of subscribers, just as movie theaters have surged. Co-existence is possible. Last month, a NATO survey found that 33 percent of moviegoers who see nine or more movies a year also spend 15 hours per week on streaming platforms.

“We have maintained for years that streaming in the home is not taking away from the moviegoing experience,” said Fithian. “If anything, streaming in the home is damaging other forms of home entertainment. Cable television, for example. DVD sales, for example.”

Streaming will only be more omnipresent in 2019, when Disney and Warner Bros. are set to debut their own Netflix-like services. But both studios remain resolutely devoted to exhibition and in releasing some of their biggest releases in traditional slow periods on the calendar. The year’s biggest movie, “Black Panther,” opened in February. Three of Warner Bros.’ top performers — “The Meg,” ”Crazy Rich Asians” and “The Nun” — benefited from the typically quiet dog-days of summer.

“There were some really good movies that were spread out through the year,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros. distribution chief. “That’s the real takeaway: Make good movies, people will come.”

But disruption is still at the door. Subscription services remade the moviegoing experience, led by the swift rise and fall of MoviePass, which took credit for the box-office revival before its inexpensive pricing structure proved unsustainable. MoviePass ran out of cash, repeatedly revamped its business model and descended into chaos, lawsuits and even a fraud investigation.

The box office still chugged along (Fithian calls MoviePass’ impact “overblown”) and other subscription services (notably one by AMC , the world’s largest chain) entered the fray.

Other threats to the movie theater loom. When Disney’s acquisition of Fox is made official, there will be one less major studio in Hollywood. Further consolidation is expected, something Fithian grants “poses a challenge” for exhibitors that depend on a steady supply of movies. But he pointed to others that have picked up the slack: STX, Annapurna, A24, Bleecker St., Amazon and Apple, which last month partnered with A24 for a slate of films.

Whether 2019 will continue the box-office trend or see a repeat of last year will come down, as it always does, to the movies. Analysts are bullish, predicting another record-setting year thanks to a Disney-heavy lineup including sure-fire blockbusters “Avengers: Endgame,” ”Captain Marvel,” ”Frozen 2″ and “Star Wars: Episode IX.”

“On paper, that year is going to make this year look like small potatoes,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore.

Of course, similar predictions were made for 2017, too. That’s the problem with movie scripts. They can always be rewritten.

Story: Jake Coyle

DHAKA, Bangladesh — Facebook is shutting down a series of fake news sites spreading false information about the Bangladesh opposition days before national elections, an official from the social media platform told The Associated Press.

The sites — nine Facebook pages designed to mimic legitimate news outlets, as well as six fake personal accounts spreading anti-opposition propaganda — were created by Bangladeshis with government ties, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, said in an exclusive interview.

The sites would be shut down “for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior” by Thursday evening at the latest, he said by telephone from California.

A threat intelligence company that Facebook worked with determined that the people who created and managed the sites are “associated with the government,” he said, declining to provide further details.

Twitter later said it had suspended 15 accounts in Bangladesh, most with fewer than 50 followers, “for engaging in coordinated platform manipulation.”

“Based on our initial analysis, it appears that some of these accounts may have ties to state-sponsored actors,” it said on Twitter. It gave few other details and it was not immediately clear when the suspensions occurred.

On Facebook, the sites were all designed to look like authentic news pages, including one operated by the BBC’s Bangla-language service and another by the popular Bangladeshi online newspaper Bdnews24.com.

The sites would report false information about such things as turmoil in the camp of imprisoned opposition leader Khaled Zia.

“These are fake but look like independent news outlets,” said Gleicher, noting all were “pro-government and anti-opposition.”

Facebook began its investigation of the pages in November, and the Thursday shutdowns were “prompted by both external and internal evidence, including a tip from Graphika, a threat intelligence company that we work with,” he said.

While the nine pages did not immediately seem to have particularly large reach by Facebook standards — Gleicher said one had 11,900 followers — it comes at a key time for Bangladesh, with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina attempting to return to office for a third consecutive time in Dec. 30 elections.

“Frankly, this is a small network involving Bangladesh but this is very important for us” Gleicher said, adding that Facebook “does not want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they are doing.”

Facebook has come under intense criticism for its role in spreading false and divisive messages, from phony political accounts weighing in on the 2016 U.S. presidential election to racist statements in Myanmar.

Gleicher said Thursday’s move was part of Facebook’s efforts to remove fraudulent pages and accounts. The company disabled 754 million fake accounts globally in the third quarter of this year, up from 583 million in the first quarter in 2018.

One false post reported that Zia, the country’s most prominent opposition figure, had fired the general secretary of her Bangladesh Nationalist Party. The report, on the sham version of bdnews24.com, said Zia had ordered the firing in a videotaped message sent from prison. Another story, on the fake BBC site, falsely described deep divisions within Zia’s party. It was illustrated with a photo of a burned car, implying those divisions had led to riots during an opposition rally.

The top editor at bdnews24.com, told the AP that he was aware of multiple fake sites for his outlet and had contacted regulatory and law enforcement agencies to get them closed. But “nothing happened,” Toufique Imrose Khalidi said.

“There are other clone sites for bdnews24.com. Our readers get confused and we lose revenue because they think these are real,” he said.

Sabir Mustafa, editor of the BBC’s Bangla-language service, said from London that other fake sites had been found in the past, but were shut down after the BBC notified Facebook, or the domains where the websites operated.

“Whenever we find a fake BBC Bangla Facebook page, we report it and they are removed,” Mustafa said.

Zakir Hossain Khan, a spokesman for the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission or BTRC, told the AP by phone that it was regularly in touch with Facebook for anything that could “destabilize the public order,” but it had received no recent complaints.

Fake news is not limited to pro-government sites.

In November, security officials arrested a Bangladeshi student studying in South Korea for his alleged involvement in creating 22 fake news portals spreading anti-government propaganda, police said. Police said the student is a member of Islami Chhatra Shibir, the student wing of Jamaat-e-Islami party, a key ally of Zia’s party.

Bangladesh’s chaotic politics has been dominated for years by the fierce rivalry between Hasina and Zia. Police say at least five people have died and dozens more have been injured in political clashes since Dec. 10.

Opposition leaders, along with international rights groups, have accused the government and security agencies of abusing their power to arrest opposition activists and intimidate others into silence. The government denies that.

Zia, a former prime minister, is serving seven years in prison on corruption charges in one case and 10 years in a second case. Her supporters say both were politically motivated. An appeals court recently ruled she could not run for office because of the convictions.

Story:  Julhas Alam

LONDON — Drones buzzing over the runway forced the shutdown of London’s Gatwick Airport on Thursday during one of the busiest times of the year, stranding or delaying tens of thousands of Christmas-season travelers and setting off a hunt for the operator of the intruding aircraft.

The prospect of a deadly collision between what police described as industrial-grade drones and an airliner led authorities to stop all flights in and out.

Police said they had no doubt the intrusion was a deliberate attempt to disrupt operations at the airport during a peak period, but there were “absolutely no indications to suggest this is terror-related.”

About 20 police units from two forces tried to zero in on the drone operator after the first sighting over Gatwick on Wednesday evening. Police told airport officials it was too risky to try to shoot down the two drones — stray bullets might kill someone.

“Each time we believe we get close to the operator, the drone disappears. When we look to reopen the airfield, the drone reappears,” said Sussex Police Superintendent Justin Burtenshaw. He said the newer-generation drones are bigger and have more range, making it harder for police to locate the person controlling the device.

Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said the military would be deployed to help police. He said the armed forces would bring “unique capabilities” but gave no details.

With drones booming in popularity and becoming increasingly affordable, aviation authorities have been warning in recent years about the risk of a catastrophic collision with an airliner, and Britain — and the U.S. — have tightened restrictions. Drones could get sucked into a jet engine or crash through a windshield, incapacitating the pilot.

The crisis at Gatwick had a ripple effect on air travel in Britain, continental Europe and beyond as incoming flights were sent to other locations and outgoing ones were grounded. British authorities said they would lift some night-flight noise restrictions at other airports to ease the congestion.

Travelers described freezing conditions overnight at Gatwick as hundreds slept on benches and floors, and passengers and their families complained they weren’t being kept informed about re-routed flights.

“We understand it’s an emergency situation, but the lack of information is really surprising,” said Vanessa Avila, an American based in Britain who works for the U.S. military. Her mother was on a flight from Florida to Gatwick that ended up landing in the northern English city of Manchester.

Gatwick — Britain’s second-busiest airport by passenger numbers — first closed its runway Wednesday evening after the drones were spotted. It reopened briefly at about 3 a.m. Thursday but shut down 45 minutes later after further sightings.

The airport, about 30 miles (45 kilometers) south of London, sees more than 43 million passengers a year. About 110,000 had been scheduled to pass through on Thursday.

Gatwick Chief Executive Stewart Wingate said the drone intrusion was calculated to cause “maximum disruption” just before Christmas.

Police said the drones were of an “industrial specification,” an indication they weren’t the small, inexpensive machines sold to hobbyists. The larger drones are more dangerous to jets in flight and can stay in the air longer.

The airport’s terminals were jammed with thousands of weary travelers.

“I haven’t slept since yesterday morning. We are very tired. It’s freezing, we are cold, having to wear all of these coats for extra blankets,” said Andri Kyprianou, of Cyprus, whose flight to Kiev was canceled.

“There were pregnant women. One of them was sleeping on the floor. There were people with small babies in here overnight. We saw disabled people on chairs. There were young children sleeping on the floor.”

Passengers complained on Twitter that their Gatwick-bound flights had been diverted to London’s Heathrow Airport, Manchester, Birmingham and other cities.

Luke McComiskie, who landed in Manchester, more than 160 miles (260 kilometers) from London, said the situation “was just chaos, and they had only two coaches (buses) and taxis charging people 600 pounds ($760) to get to Gatwick.”

Pilots around the world have reported numerous close calls with drones in recent years. Under British law, flying a drone within 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) of an airport is punishable by up to five years in prison.

Gatwick briefly closed its runway last year when a drone was spotted in the area. A drone also briefly led to the shutdown of Dubai’s international airport in 2016.

Britain’s Guild of Air Traffic Control Officers complained that regulators have repeatedly ignored its calls for tougher measures against drones. It said it has urged the use of “geofencing” — software to stop drones from flying into restricted airspace — and other countermeasures.

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Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed