Monetary-wise, the videogame industry passed the movie industry about five years ago.

Now it isn't even close. Videogame revenues far surpass movie revenues. Chalk it up to the price of consoles (included in videogame revenue while DVD players are not included in movie sales) or whatever, but the industry is larger.

I've heard that in the past few years games have been above movies in terms of revenue per year.

That being said, people in the movie industry make way more money than people in the game industry. I'm not sure what a systems designer's counterpart in the movie industry would be, but I'd be willing to guess that they make at least twice as much and their royalties are through the roof.

Wonder why that is...

This is completely wrong.

 Seriously, seriously wrong. 

 This was what my understanding was.

Movie Source

Worldwide box office reached an all-time high in 2006 with $25.82 billion.  This does not count dvd sales/rentals. This total would be logically more than double or triple this figure.

Game Source 

Computer and video game industry took in about USD$7.1 billion in the US in 2005. Now, granted this increased in 2006, but, not to over $50 that the movie industry easily hits.

Even wikipedia states "However, contrary to popular belief, the video game industry is not "bigger than Hollywood"; while video game sales have exceeded the film industry's annual box office, Hollywood generated $31 billion in total 1999 revenue.^"

Acording to imdb there are 317 movies which grossed over 200 million @.
Acording to vgchartz there are 119 which sold more than 4 million.
Why 4 million? Becouse if an average game cost 50$ you need to sell 4 million of them to gross 200 million $. (It's not excally right becouse video games prices are mostly lowered after some time and average price is lower than 50 $ in the game lifetime)

Nevertheless it shows that movie industry is bigger and probably few times as vg. I think that Desroko's estimates can be quite close (the video industry also have profits in DVD, TV, etc, which maybe arent as big as cinemas but still are important).
Of course there are some revenues in console systems but they aren't as big.

After more research, it looks like Hollywood is closer to half of the global industry, which is about $100 billion strong.

 wow, it isnt even close eh? to bad it isnt even that close in the OTHER direction.   i love when people with no clue act like they are the final word on a subject.  always good for a laugh.

 Yea you're right

i wanted to say the same =)