Carol was the best reviewed film of the year. However, Mad Max made the most critics' top 10 list appearances, including the most #1s.
EDIT: If you are going by RT instead of Metacritic, Inside Out might have been #1.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Wkd BO 0217-1917 - Americans say no to The Wall on Presidents' Day Weekend
- Thread starter kswiston
- Start date
- Status
Carol was the best reviewed film of the year. However, Mad Max made the most critics' top 10 list appearances, including the most #1s.
EDIT: If you are going by RT instead of Metacritic, Inside Out might have been #1.
OrangeAtlas
Member
That movie was so good. That's the real crime of this year's Oscars.
I'm sure if it had stayed as The Cellar we'd be hearing more about it now, but the moment it became a Cloverfield sequel, yeah not a chance the Academy was going to touch it.
lightskintwin
Banned
That movie was so good. That's the real crime of this year's Oscars.
Hey, I've always felt The Matrix should've been nominated for Best Picture. I'm curious if it would've if the maximum 10 picture nominations were in play then.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
I dunno, 99 was a pretty damn good year.
Then again, American Beauty actually won BP for that year, didn't it?
So maybe it woulda made the cut.
Then again, American Beauty actually won BP for that year, didn't it?
So maybe it woulda made the cut.
Biggest-Geek-Ever
Member
Would have had a pretty good chance. It swept the 4 awards it was nominated for, including Film Editing, an award often giving to a BP nominee (of the film's nominated for editing that year, Matrix was the only one to not also get a BP nom).
I think with the current rules, we would have definitely seen TDK get in, possibly The Bourne Ultimatum, WALL-E, and maybe Pirates of the Caribbean 1.
lightskintwin
Banned
Of course The Dark Knight would've been nominated, the whole reason they went back to potential 10 picture nominations the following year was directly due to it's omission.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Speaking of 99, how amazing would we remember the Matrix if that was the only one they ever made?
2 and 3 really dragged down its legacy.
Biggest-Geek-Ever
Member
The Academy went to 10 nominees in 2009 and 2010, and then moved to a preferential voting system that can have anywhere between 5 and 10.
TDK definitely would have gotten in even with the latter rules. I'm not certain about the Matrix though; it may have ended up like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and not scoring a nom even though it went on to win editing.
You just wait until the Matrix Reborn blows the pants off of everyone.
The matrix fanboys, for a brief period of time the cool kids on the internet, will rise once again to power!
twinturbo2
butthurt Heat fan
No way in hell Chazelle loses Best Director. Book it.
There's a "this had Oscar buzz" Tumblr, and the entry for Birth of a Nation is savage.
http://thishadoscarbuzz.tumblr.com/post/157196502717/we-all-know-what-happened-oscar-buzz
The buzz for that was purely reactionary from last year's OscarSoWhite. Turned out to be a junk film.
BronsonLee
Member
Mad Max was never gonna win that shit tbh
It won the Gaffy
LordOfLore
Banned
My father is going to LA and the Oscars this week. Agent for the main actor in A Man Called Ove and helped get the film moving in Sweden. Was a massive success over here and knocked the crap out of TFA which released the same week IIRC. Will be interesting to see if it'll get all it's nominated for.
Was surprised when it was announced as actually heading to LA. Was so sure The Handmaiden would get a spot after seeing it.
Was surprised when it was announced as actually heading to LA. Was so sure The Handmaiden would get a spot after seeing it.
And yet 2/3 crush the "action" in most blockbusters. Chateau scene and Freeway are so much better in this age of jump cut bullshit.
That was a travesty.
ryutaro's mama
Member
I agree those sequences were amazing. The rest of the film? Eh.
Case in point, 'Airplane rescue' was one of the best comic book scenes ever shot (and definitely the best Supes sequence, ever, imo) set inside a mediocre film.
Doesn't change much.
greatestjediever
Member
I have a hard time picturing La La Land not winning BP, director and actress, given they've swept through Producers Guild, Directors Guild and SAG this year. Along with score and song, and probably sound mixing (which it also won in a guild award), my guess is LLL's floor is 6 awards, though most of it's other nominated awards I could see going to other films.
Adapted and Original Screenplays will be Moonlight's and Manchester's to take. All 5 films in cinematography were beautifully shot, though Fraser just picked up the award at the ASC awards. My guess is Fantastic Beasts or Jackie for costume design, but I guess we'll see tomorrow when CDG awards get announced. Arrival and LLL both picked up Eddie awards for editing, and LLL won production design for contemporary film and Passengers for fantasy film at the ADG. Hacksaw seems like a lock for Sound Editing. Jungle Book seems like a definite winner for Visual Effects.
I'd personally pick Denzel over Casey for best actor, though best supporting actor is harder for me to pin. I have yet to see Lion or Nocturnal Animals. Viola's a runaway for best supporting actress though, and would have dominated either lead or supporting categories regardless of which one she would have put herself in.
Adapted and Original Screenplays will be Moonlight's and Manchester's to take. All 5 films in cinematography were beautifully shot, though Fraser just picked up the award at the ASC awards. My guess is Fantastic Beasts or Jackie for costume design, but I guess we'll see tomorrow when CDG awards get announced. Arrival and LLL both picked up Eddie awards for editing, and LLL won production design for contemporary film and Passengers for fantasy film at the ADG. Hacksaw seems like a lock for Sound Editing. Jungle Book seems like a definite winner for Visual Effects.
I'd personally pick Denzel over Casey for best actor, though best supporting actor is harder for me to pin. I have yet to see Lion or Nocturnal Animals. Viola's a runaway for best supporting actress though, and would have dominated either lead or supporting categories regardless of which one she would have put herself in.
Look, I understand why adjusted-for-inflation numbers are called bullshit, as they carry a suggestion of apples-to-apples comparability that is largely false. But obviously, non-adjusted numbers are as bad or worse. That Star Wars list could serve as a case-in-point.
The amount of eyeballs/butts-in-seats is a somewhat more meaningful metric than raw unadjusted dollars, surely.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
How are they "just as bad or worse" though? I don't get it. You dont' have to apply shitty math to actual receipts in order to derive the context that adjusted figures are (poorly) attempting to provide. You can look at numbers from 1980 and realize that in the context of when that movie came out, in that era, that's a lot of money.
Box-Office being tracked purely by dollars is dumb, yeah. Tickets sold should be the metric, but it isn't. So you gotta look at the numbers as a reflection of how popular the film was with a specific audience at a specific time. That's what it is. Adjusting for inflation is a sloppy, poorly-applied means to remove that context from the numbers and apply imaginary/fictional context instead.
Also: I believe K-Swiss has gone into detail once before as to why BOM's calculator for inflation is busted anyway. So even if it was all that viable a method, they're certainly not employing it well at all.
I just get so bored with these superhero films doing jump cut fight scenes. The genre was made for clean, crisp, action scenes.
I added 4-day weekend studio estimates and updated the 3-day estimates in the OP. Lego Batman was overpredicted again, this time by about $1.5M on the 3-day total.
EDIT: If Lego Batman has the exact same legs as the Lego Movie going forward, it will make another $78M for a $185M total domestically. So $200M would require better than Lego Movie legs. So far, holds have been worse.
EDIT: If Lego Batman has the exact same legs as the Lego Movie going forward, it will make another $78M for a $185M total domestically. So $200M would require better than Lego Movie legs. So far, holds have been worse.
I don't think that, for example, TESB's $200 million haul automatically screams 'lots of money at the time'. Few people will have an intuitive 'feel' for that. So that's one area where pointing out that that's about $590 million in today's money is actually somewhat more useful than just leaving it at $200M. Even if it's not apples-to-apples to compare that $590M to the similar number put up by Rogue One, for example.
I believe using ticket price inflation can be as an attempt to do just that: translate the dollar amounts to butts-in-seats. Unfortunately it's not always easy to do so and different sites use different inflation numbers. It quickly becomes a mess, as BOM proves.
True. Which is why yearly lists are useful, as are perhaps decade lists, but all-time lists aren't. Most big budget flops make more than Gone with the Wind. Some of them make more than Empire Strikes Back. Someday, a movie that is considered a box office failure will make more than The Lion King.
But I get your point. Perhaps a metric that shows films' haul as a percentage of the total amount made at the box office that year could be interesting.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Yeah, that's a pretty good idea. I like that.
Now we just gotta get BOM to add that chart, and have 'em yank Adjusted instead.
I think that I did a few of those for fun last year in one of the TFA-era threads.
Unfortunately, we don't have amazing data for anything prior to 1982. Look at Empire's page on BOM. The original run is listed as $209M. If you look at the weekend page, the second weekend is completely missing, and the total ends at $146M in the middle of August. Where did the other $60M come from? Was it all from that run, or are they including re-expansions/re-releases in the year that followed? The Original Star Wars was even worse for that stuff.
Starting in 1982, we actually have documentation for weekly box office and re-issues.
For the hell of it, let's explore the idea of comparing Star Wars films to their contemporaries in terms of total box office share.
Right from the start, we are going to run into the problem of complete 2000s box office data vs not as complete 1980s box office data. While we do have full weekend numbers for Return of the Jedi's run (and the runs of every major film that year), a huge chunk of the total annual box office is missing.
Mojo states that the annual domestic box office in 1983 was $3,766,000,000. However, if you look at their calendar grosses for that year, you will see that they track 174 titles, accounting for $2,841,489,680. So basically, over $900M (or about 25%) of the data is missing. Probably for titles that stayed in limited release, or for older 1930-1970 films that were perpetually playing in theatres before home video really caught on. Most of the grosses for these old films are just lumped into the original release on Mojo with no further explanation.
I can try and get around this by only looking at the total gross for wide releases in a year. Wide releases are films that played in at least 600 theatres at some point in their run. I am going to have to give up on calendar grosses, because the modern Star Wars films split their run between Dec and Jan/Feb. As such, I will use the total gross for all wide-release films released in a given year as my comparison. Whether they made all their money in their release year, or split that over two years is not important.
Comparison of Star Wars films using their percentage share of the total box office for all wide release films in their year of release.
*Rogue One's numbers are not final
Based on this, Return of Jedi looks much more popular than the modern films. However, there are some issues with this comparison still.
1) Wide Releases weren't the be-all-end-all in 1983.
- Even using Mojo's incomplete numbers, the cumulative total for all tracked wide release films in 1983 was $2,266,524,524 across 85 titles. The total for all tracked wide and limited release films in 1983 was $2,657,434,919. So wide releases made up 85% of the known total. Given that $900M was missing, that percentage was probably a good deal lower.
- Looking at 2015 (since 2016 isn't finshed yet), wide releases made up $11,056,139,869 of the $11,098,709,222 total for all films. In percentage terms, 2015 wide releases were 99.6% of the total box office. The other 550 limited release (<600 venues) films in 2015 were negligible.
2) There are currently way more wide releases now than there were in the 80s
Rogue One had nearly twice as much competition in its release year than Return of the Jedi did. On average, you would expect wide releases to take about half as much of the total box office in 2016 as they did in 1983.
So, in conclusion, percentage of total box office take is not really an apples to apples comparison when we are looking at films separated by more than 30 years.
However, I can think of a better measurement. You can get the mean gross for a wide release in a given year by dividing the cumulative gross for all wide releases by the number of releases that year. Mojo does this for you. If we compare the various Star Wars grosses to the mean wide release gross for the year, I think we end up with a fairer comparison. This comparison is also independent of changes in the market. Films are super frontloaded now, and release in up to 3x as many venues as they did in the early 80s. Films also compete with home video, streaming, piracy, etc now. Most of those things didn't exist or were in their infancy in 1983. However, all releases in a particular year are going to be operating under the same reality, so that is irrelevant.
Comparison of Star Wars films using their deviation from the annual wide release average box office (in terms of a multiplier) in their year of release.
This seems more on the mark to me just looking at it. TFA was by far the biggest film in the series for its time aside from ANH. Jedi was a bit bigger than TPM, which was moderately bigger than Rogue One. The other prequels were less popular (especially AotC).
Right from the start, we are going to run into the problem of complete 2000s box office data vs not as complete 1980s box office data. While we do have full weekend numbers for Return of the Jedi's run (and the runs of every major film that year), a huge chunk of the total annual box office is missing.
Mojo states that the annual domestic box office in 1983 was $3,766,000,000. However, if you look at their calendar grosses for that year, you will see that they track 174 titles, accounting for $2,841,489,680. So basically, over $900M (or about 25%) of the data is missing. Probably for titles that stayed in limited release, or for older 1930-1970 films that were perpetually playing in theatres before home video really caught on. Most of the grosses for these old films are just lumped into the original release on Mojo with no further explanation.
I can try and get around this by only looking at the total gross for wide releases in a year. Wide releases are films that played in at least 600 theatres at some point in their run. I am going to have to give up on calendar grosses, because the modern Star Wars films split their run between Dec and Jan/Feb. As such, I will use the total gross for all wide-release films released in a given year as my comparison. Whether they made all their money in their release year, or split that over two years is not important.
Comparison of Star Wars films using their percentage share of the total box office for all wide release films in their year of release.
Code:
Title DOM BO Release Year % of wide release DOM BO [# of releases]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return of the Jedi $252,583,617 1983 11.14% [85 in 1983]
The Phantom Menace $431,088,295 1999 6.04% [145 in 1999]
Attack of the Clones $302,191,252 2002 3.43% [153 in 2002]
Revenge of the Sith $380,270,577 2005 4.49% [155 in 2005]
The Force Awakens $936,662,225 2015 8.47% [158 in 2015]
Rogue One* $528,791,468 2016 4.82% [165 in 2016]*Rogue One's numbers are not final
Based on this, Return of Jedi looks much more popular than the modern films. However, there are some issues with this comparison still.
1) Wide Releases weren't the be-all-end-all in 1983.
- Even using Mojo's incomplete numbers, the cumulative total for all tracked wide release films in 1983 was $2,266,524,524 across 85 titles. The total for all tracked wide and limited release films in 1983 was $2,657,434,919. So wide releases made up 85% of the known total. Given that $900M was missing, that percentage was probably a good deal lower.
- Looking at 2015 (since 2016 isn't finshed yet), wide releases made up $11,056,139,869 of the $11,098,709,222 total for all films. In percentage terms, 2015 wide releases were 99.6% of the total box office. The other 550 limited release (<600 venues) films in 2015 were negligible.
2) There are currently way more wide releases now than there were in the 80s
Rogue One had nearly twice as much competition in its release year than Return of the Jedi did. On average, you would expect wide releases to take about half as much of the total box office in 2016 as they did in 1983.
So, in conclusion, percentage of total box office take is not really an apples to apples comparison when we are looking at films separated by more than 30 years.
However, I can think of a better measurement. You can get the mean gross for a wide release in a given year by dividing the cumulative gross for all wide releases by the number of releases that year. Mojo does this for you. If we compare the various Star Wars grosses to the mean wide release gross for the year, I think we end up with a fairer comparison. This comparison is also independent of changes in the market. Films are super frontloaded now, and release in up to 3x as many venues as they did in the early 80s. Films also compete with home video, streaming, piracy, etc now. Most of those things didn't exist or were in their infancy in 1983. However, all releases in a particular year are going to be operating under the same reality, so that is irrelevant.
Comparison of Star Wars films using their deviation from the annual wide release average box office (in terms of a multiplier) in their year of release.
Code:
Title DOM BO Release Year Annual Avg BO for wide film Avg BO Mult.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return of the Jedi $252,583,617 1983 $26,664,994 9.47x
The Phantom Menace $431,088,295 1999 $49,150,921 8.77x
Attack of the Clones $302,191,252 2002 $57,563,869 5.25x
Revenge of the Sith $380,270,577 2005 $54,579,849 6.97x
The Force Awakens $936,662,225 2015 $69,975,569 13.39x
Rogue One $528,791,468 2016 $66,530,872 7.95xThis seems more on the mark to me just looking at it. TFA was by far the biggest film in the series for its time aside from ANH. Jedi was a bit bigger than TPM, which was moderately bigger than Rogue One. The other prequels were less popular (especially AotC).
hodayathink
Member
You are a true scholar. Thanks for the work.
vinnygambini
Why are strippers at the U.N. bad when they're great at strip clubs???
Bless thy 🧀
Biggest-Geek-Ever
Member
BOM does do that for monthly, seasonal, and quarterly data. It's not perfect, since I'm pretty sure they use the total gross of a film's first run and compare to the gross of all films made during the time period. It's not a big issue nowadays, because films are very frontloaded, but it falls apart a bit when you go back further than the mid '90s: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/seasonal/?chart=byseason&season=Summer&view=releasedate
Still, it's clear that, as a percentage of total gross, Jurassic World and Avengers are way ahead of any summer blockbusters in the last 20 years, and compare favorably to anything post '83.
ryutaro's mama
Member
K-SWIZZLE DA GAWD
Lights and Waves
Member
Wow, Wellness is DOA.
MHWilliams
Member
I cannot fathom who greenlit that script for $40 million. Who looked at the plot and said "Yes, this will make millions".
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
ryutaro's mama
Member
Will Smith will probably do that one.
(Should be Gus from Breaking Bad tho)
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Goddammit why is K-Swiss not in charge of BOM.
It's bullshit.
It's bullshit.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
Maybe we should send these threads...well, just parts of them, up to the overlords at Amazon.
K-Swiss would run an awesome ship there.
I decided to expand on what I was talking about in the Star Wars post, and apply it to every blockbuster in the past 35 years that made at least 5x the wide release average for its year of release. I think that this method leads to a number of interesting results.
So here are your exceptionally strong performances since 1982:
20 films made at least 5x the annual average from 1982-1989. Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark would have also made the list for this decade, but complete data for 1980-1981 doesn't exist to give a proper multiplier to either film. Both would have been over 8x though.
As you will see in the charts for the other decades, a greater than 10x yearly average multiplier is a once or twice in a decade event. E.T. was predictably the biggest film of the decade, followed by Return of Jedi.
Summary of the 80s:
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 7
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 10
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 13
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: at least 22
- Non-Sequels on the list: 15 (68% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 14 (64% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 8
- Superhero Films: 1
Titanic was the biggest over-performer in all 35 years examined. It's possible that Titanic was the biggest over-performer ever, but I don't have accurate first run numbers for Star Wars or a 1977 average to compare it to. Ditto for Jaws. Anything much earlier than that was in an era too different from the modern era to be all that comparable. Jurassic Park was also very strong, coming in third for the entire period.
1998 was the only year of the 35 that I examined that had no films hit the 5x wide release average multiplier. Saving Private Ryan was close, so I left it in.
We start to see the emergence of the modern sequel-heavy tentpole strategy at the end of the 90s. Even without a Titanic-sized outlier boosting the overall average by $3.5-4M, we continue to see the average gross for wide releases rise in 1998-1999.
Summary of the 90s:
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 6
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 7
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 11
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: 23
- Non-Sequels on the list: 19 (83% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 15 (65% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 9
- Superhero Films: 1
Avatar and The Dark Knight are the standouts from this decade. Avatar had the 4th biggest multiplier of the entire period, and TDK was 6th. The early 00s had a lot of strong performers outside of these lists, which probably made it harder for films to achieve the greater than 7x multipliers as frequently as in the 80s/90s, even though we are starting to see monster grosses happen more often.
The early 00s saw the release of several franchises that dominated these lists for about a decade. As such, we start to see a lot more sequels.
Summary of the 00s:
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 3
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 5
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 13
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: 27
- Non-Sequels on the list: 12 (44% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 6 (22% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 25
- Superhero Films: 5
By the 2010s, audiences have firmly established that they like to see familiar things. The Force Awakens was the second biggest over-performer after Titanic, and probably the second or third most impressive box office run in nearly 4 decades depending on where you place E.T.'s run. Jurassic World and the Avengers were the other two standout films of the decade so far.
Most of the patterns that we saw in the 00s apply to this decade. Monster grosses in absolute dollars are more common, but the top heavy nature of the box office makes high multipliers relatively harder to achieve. Sci Fi and Fantasy (including superhero films) have dominated the box office for close to 2 decades now. I don't know if we'll ever see something like Tootsie or Beverly Hills Cop make one of these charts again. American Sniper was the biggest outlier since Passions of the Christ.
Summary of the 10s (so far):
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 3
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 5
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 8
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: 25
- Non-Sequels on the list: 9* (36% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 6 (24% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 19
- Superhero Films: 7
*Guardians of the Galaxy was counted as a non-sequel, as it didn't feature any major characters from previous films. Avengers was counted as a sequel.
So here are your exceptionally strong performances since 1982:
Code:
1980s
Title DOM BO Release Year / Avg wide rel BO Avg BO Mult.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E.T. $359,197,037 1982 $33,212,941 10.81x
Tootsie $177,200,000 1982 $33,212,941 5.34x
Return of the Jedi $252,583,617 1983 $26,664,994 9.47x
Beverly Hills Cop $234,760,478 1984 $28,332,799 8.29x
Ghostbusters $229,242,989 1984 $28,332,799 8.09x
Temple of Doom $179,870,271 1984 $28,332,799 6.34x
Gremlins $148,168,459 1984 $28,332,799 5.23x
Back to the Future $210,609,762 1985 $24,258,606 8.68x
Rambo 2 $150,415,432 1985 $24,258,606 6.20x
Rocky 4 $127,873,716 1985 $24,258,606 5.27x
Top Gun $176,781,728 1986 $24,655,691 7.17x
Crocodile Dundee $174,803,506 1986 $24,655,691 7.09x
Three Men and a Baby $167,780,960 1987 $27,402,173 6.12x
Fatal Attraction $156,645,693 1987 $27,402,173 5.72x
Beverly Hills Cop II $153,665,036 1987 $27,402,173 5.61x
Platoon $138,530,565 1987 $27,402,173 5.06x
Rain Man $172,825,435 1988 $29,105,204 5.94x
Who Framed Roger Rabbit $156,452,370 1988 $29,105,204 5.38x
Batman $251,188,924 1989 $33,000,766 7.61x
The Last Crusade $197,171,806 1989 $33,000,766 5.97x20 films made at least 5x the annual average from 1982-1989. Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark would have also made the list for this decade, but complete data for 1980-1981 doesn't exist to give a proper multiplier to either film. Both would have been over 8x though.
As you will see in the charts for the other decades, a greater than 10x yearly average multiplier is a once or twice in a decade event. E.T. was predictably the biggest film of the decade, followed by Return of Jedi.
Summary of the 80s:
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 7
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 10
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 13
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: at least 22
- Non-Sequels on the list: 15 (68% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 14 (64% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 8
- Superhero Films: 1
Code:
1990s
Title DOM BO Release Year / Avg wide rel BO Avg BO Mult.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Home Alone $285,761,243 1990 $36,642,628 7.80x
Ghost $217,631,306 1990 $36,642,628 5.94x
Dances with Wolves $184,208,848 1990 $36,642,628 5.03x
Terminator 2 $204,843,345 1991 $32,776,183 6.25x
RH: Prince of Thieves $165,493,908 1991 $32,776,183 5.05x
Aladdin $217,350,219 1992 $36,199,432 6.00x
Jurassic Park $357,067,947 1993 $31,828,078 11.22x
Mrs Doubtfire $219,195,243 1993 $31,828,078 6.89x
The Fugitive $183,875,760 1993 $31,828,078 5.78x
Forrest Gump $329,694,499 1994 $34,833,770 9.46x
The Lion King $312,855,561 1994 $34,833,770 8.98x
Toy Story $191,796,233 1995 $33,671,473 5.70x
Batman Forever $184,031,112 1995 $33,671,473 5.47x
Apollo 13 $172,071,312 1995 $33,671,473 5.11x
Independence Day $306,169,268 1996 $36,176,594 8.46x
Twister $241,721,524 1996 $36,176,594 6.68x
Mission: Impossible $180,981,856 1996 $36,176,594 5.00x
Titanic $600,788,188 1997 $42,461,771 14.15x
Men in Black $250,690,539 1997 $42,461,771 5.90x
The Lost World $229,086,679 1997 $42,461,771 5.40x
Saving Private Ryan $216,540,909 1998 $43,842,668 4.94x
The Phantom Menace $431,088,295 1999 $49,150,921 8.77x
The Sixth Sense $293,506,292 1999 $49,150,921 5.97x
Toy Story 2 $245,852,179 1999 $49,150,921 5.00xTitanic was the biggest over-performer in all 35 years examined. It's possible that Titanic was the biggest over-performer ever, but I don't have accurate first run numbers for Star Wars or a 1977 average to compare it to. Ditto for Jaws. Anything much earlier than that was in an era too different from the modern era to be all that comparable. Jurassic Park was also very strong, coming in third for the entire period.
1998 was the only year of the 35 that I examined that had no films hit the 5x wide release average multiplier. Saving Private Ryan was close, so I left it in.
We start to see the emergence of the modern sequel-heavy tentpole strategy at the end of the 90s. Even without a Titanic-sized outlier boosting the overall average by $3.5-4M, we continue to see the average gross for wide releases rise in 1998-1999.
Summary of the 90s:
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 6
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 7
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 11
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: 23
- Non-Sequels on the list: 19 (83% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 15 (65% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 9
- Superhero Films: 1
Code:
2000s
Title DOM BO Release Year / Avg wide rel BO Avg BO Mult.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Grinch $260,044,825 2000 $48,984,150 5.31x
Harry Potter: SS $317,575,550 2001 $55,856,207 5.69x
Fellowship of the Ring $313,364,114 2001 $55,856,207 5.61x
Spider-man $403,706,375 2002 $57,563,869 7.01x
The Two Towers $339,789,881 2002 $57,563,869 5.90x
Attack of the Clones $302,191,252 2002 $57,563,869 5.25x
Return of the King $377,027,325 2003 $60,282,246 6.25x
Finding Nemo $339,714,978 2003 $60,282,246 5.64x
PotC: CotBP $305,413,918 2003 $60,282,246 5.07x
Shrek 2 $441,226,247 2004 $59,227,007 7.45x
Spider-man 2 $373,585,825 2004 $59,227,007 6.31x
Passion of the Christ $370,274,604 2004 $59,227,007 6.25x
Revenge of the Sith $380,270,577 2005 $54,579,849 6.97x
Narnia: tLtWatW $291,710,957 2005 $54,579,849 5.34x
Goblet of Fire $290,013,036 2005 $54,579,849 5.31x
Dead Man's Chest $423,315,812 2006 $50,886,999 8.32x
Spider-man 3 $336,530,303 2007 $49,880,317 6.75x
Shrek 3 $322,719,944 2007 $49,880,317 6.47x
Transformers $319,246,193 2007 $49,880,317 6.40x
At World's End $309,420,425 2007 $49,880,317 6.20x
Order of the Phoenix $292,004,738 2007 $49,880,317 5.85x
I Am Legend $256,393,010 2007 $49,880,317 5.14x
The Dark Knight $533,345,358 2008 $55,202,302 9.66x
Iron Man $318,412,101 2008 $55,202,302 5.77x
The Crystal Skull $317,101,119 2008 $55,202,302 5.74x
Avatar $749,766,139 2009 $69,099,350 10.85x
Revenge of the Fallen $402,111,870 2009 $69,099,350 5.82xAvatar and The Dark Knight are the standouts from this decade. Avatar had the 4th biggest multiplier of the entire period, and TDK was 6th. The early 00s had a lot of strong performers outside of these lists, which probably made it harder for films to achieve the greater than 7x multipliers as frequently as in the 80s/90s, even though we are starting to see monster grosses happen more often.
The early 00s saw the release of several franchises that dominated these lists for about a decade. As such, we start to see a lot more sequels.
Summary of the 00s:
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 3
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 5
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 13
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: 27
- Non-Sequels on the list: 12 (44% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 6 (22% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 25
- Superhero Films: 5
Code:
2010s
Title DOM BO Release Year / Avg wide rel BO Avg BO Mult.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Toy Story 3 $415,004,880 2010 $71,180,641 5.83x
Deathly Hallows Pt2 $381,011,219 2011 $66,489,763 5.73x
Dark of the Moon $352,390,543 2011 $66,489,763 5.30x
The Avengers $623,357,910 2012 $72,191,281 8.63x
The Dark Knight Rises $448,139,099 2012 $72,191,281 6.21x
The Hunger Games $408,010,692 2012 $72,191,281 5.65x
Catching Fire $424,668,047 2013 $72,374,829 5.87x
Iron Man 3 $409,013,994 2013 $72,374,829 5.65x
Frozen $400,738,009 2013 $72,374,829 5.54x
Despicable Me 2 $368,061,265 2013 $72,374,829 5.09x
Mockingjay Pt 1 $337,135,885 2014 $65,542,400 5.14x
Guard. of the Galaxy $333,176,600 2014 $65,542,400 5.08x
The Force Awakens $936,662,225 2015 $69,975,569 13.39x
Jurassic World $652,270,625 2015 $69,975,569 9.32x
Age of Ultron $459,005,868 2015 $69,975,569 6.56x
Inside Out $356,461,711 2015 $69,975,569 5.09x
Furious 7 $353,007,020 2015 $69,975,569 5.04x
American Sniper $350,126,372 2015 $69,975,569 5.00x
Rogue One $528,791,468 2016 $66,530,872 7.95x
Finding Dory $486,295,561 2016 $66,530,872 7.31x
CA: Civil War $408,084,349 2016 $66,530,872 6.13x
Secret Life of Pets $368,384,330 2016 $66,530,872 5.54x
The Jungle Book $364,001,123 2016 $66,530,872 5.47x
Deadpool $363,070,709 2016 $66,530,872 5.46x
Zootopia $341,268,248 2016 $66,530,872 5.13xBy the 2010s, audiences have firmly established that they like to see familiar things. The Force Awakens was the second biggest over-performer after Titanic, and probably the second or third most impressive box office run in nearly 4 decades depending on where you place E.T.'s run. Jurassic World and the Avengers were the other two standout films of the decade so far.
Most of the patterns that we saw in the 00s apply to this decade. Monster grosses in absolute dollars are more common, but the top heavy nature of the box office makes high multipliers relatively harder to achieve. Sci Fi and Fantasy (including superhero films) have dominated the box office for close to 2 decades now. I don't know if we'll ever see something like Tootsie or Beverly Hills Cop make one of these charts again. American Sniper was the biggest outlier since Passions of the Christ.
Summary of the 10s (so far):
- Films greater than 8x the annual wide release mean: 3
- Films greater than 7x the annual wide release mean: 5
- Films greater than 6x the annual wide release mean: 8
- Films greater than 5x the annual wide release mean: 25
- Non-Sequels on the list: 9* (36% of the list)
- Original Films (no remakes or existing franchises): 6 (24% of the list)
- Sci Fi and Fantasy films: 19
- Superhero Films: 7
*Guardians of the Galaxy was counted as a non-sequel, as it didn't feature any major characters from previous films. Avengers was counted as a sequel.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
The hero we deserve here.
Bobby Roberts
Banned
Okay, yeah, someone needs to forward this shit to someone in charge at Amazon or something. This is too good.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
K-Swiss right now:
MHWilliams
Member
Fantastic work, Kswis.
So it looks like up until the 2000 era, Hollywood start consolidating around the mid-range (5x, 6x) instead of the top-end. I assume that's filmmakers generally being better at making films, or studios having a firm understanding of audience taste.
2010 era looks down, but we still have 3 years left to see how the number shake out.
So it looks like up until the 2000 era, Hollywood start consolidating around the mid-range (5x, 6x) instead of the top-end. I assume that's filmmakers generally being better at making films, or studios having a firm understanding of audience taste.
2010 era looks down, but we still have 3 years left to see how the number shake out.
ryutaro's mama
Member
Now he's just showing off.
❤️
❤️
13 films on the list for this decade were from 2015-2016. Disney doesn't really seem to be letting up in the next 3 years either.
Regarding the post-2000 era, we also get more films in the 3x-5x range than we did previously. Basically our $200-350M films currently, give or take a bit depending on the year.
If you look at the 80s, 1989 had the most films over the 3x barrier with 9. The rest of the years had 5-8.
This decade has seen 9-13 films a year hit that 3x barrier.
Some of this also explains why we don't get as many 7+ multipliers. There's always something fairly big playing.
PhoncipleBone
Banned
I am interpreting that as them just looking at year round releases, like they can release anything anytime. If the film is there, people will come, regardless of season. Before, the big releases were concentrated in summer and holidays.
Of course, September is still the shitting grounds it seems. What year will fix that?
October isn't treated that much better in most years.
Speaking of October, why are Blade Runner 2049 and Kingsman 2 currently scheduled for the same Oct 3rd weekend, when this August's release schedule is currently doing its best September impression?
Obliterator
Member
Kswis as someone who spends a lot of time looking at sales / revenue info (though way more gaming related) you are a freak of nature when it comes to box office analysis.
Bravo
Bravo
MHWilliams
Member
Right. So Hollywood is, overall, making better films. Further, it's gotten better at spacing them out, so there's always competition. Intriguing.
Discotheque
Banned
can't really infer that from the results, unless it's just personal opinion of course. just at a quick glance I'm liking the 2000s much more than the 10's for big money movies. more successful spread of box office results tho for sure.
foxuzamaki
Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
john wick needs to be higher
- Status