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Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continuall
by somenameforme 1y ago
Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. [1] All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size.
And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them!
Even for individual movies. For all the men-in-spandex movies, the best selling movie (by tickets sold) in modern times is Titanic, 27 years ago.
[1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/ https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
- 3eb7988a1663 1y agoI assumed those box office records were also dependent upon global ticket sales vs domestic. Still, surprising statistics.
- vasco 1y agoMovies are still great, just not the main circuit. If you live in a large city most often you have access to indie movies or secondary rotation of festival movies instead of 3 marvels, one remake and one romantic like in the big box places.
- somenameforme 1y agoI think they simply did what AAA video games did. They found what sold best at one moment in time and then obsessively tried to work to copy that. But the problem is that people don't want to play 40 different Call of Duties, or watch 30 different Batmen. It's just that Batman or Call of Duty were the 'meet in the middle' of a variety of different tastes. But when those other tastes aren't accounted for, it becomes nauseating. It's like how most of everybody really likes cake icing, but eating nothing but cake icing is quite a repulsive concept. I think things like Dune, Interstellar, and other such films emphasize that there's a gaping hole in the market for things besides men in spandex, but it's just not being filled. And there's even extensive social commentary in Dune (as in the book) but it's done through metaphor rather than shoving it down your throat. And the movie is also rather slow paced with some 3 key events playing out in a 155 minute film, yet it continues to do extremely well. On the other hand those Fremen suits are kind of spandexy...
- IAmBroom 1y agoNot sure that pointing out the success of sci fi franchises is proof audiences want diversity. The VAST majority of movies that have been made in the past (when the real indicator, % of population going to movies, peaked) deal with ordinary, realistic human stories. Murders are incredibly popular, of course, but so are fraught romances, coming-of-age, and grounded hero-quest movies (which even Bachelorette Party borrows from). But your point is otherwise completely valid. They found out everyone likes cake, and converted their buffet restaurant to all-cake all-day!
- vasco 1y agoThey didn't that was my point. But if people just go to the food court at the mall and complain there's 90% fast food... Go to a smaller movie theater, go to movie festivals that happen every year in most big cities, you'll see the majority of movies have nothing to do with the few major Hollywood block busters. And comparing Dune, a major block busters to other ones makes no sense when the point was that you need to go outside the main circuit.
- PaulHoule 1y agoMy take is that the movies you see at the arthouse cinema aren't any better than the big movies, they just have a smaller budget. They come out of the same system and would be just as self-indulgent if they had the resources to be.
- actionfromafar 1y agoThey don't come out of the same system. A nice chunk of them are self-funded and driven by a passion to tell the story.
- vasco 1y agoIt shows you don't watch them, you can obviously find Hollywood-without-the-budget cause the people that work in Hollywood come from somewhere, but you also have things that are completely outside. Some documentary about a Georgian truck driver who goes across the country side selling supplies from the city to the villages with long, no dialog shots that go for several minutes, has nothing to do with Hollywood productions and there's a million fractal things like this that would be way too "boring" for mass consumption.
- giantg2 1y agoDrive-ins are nice in smaller towns
- dfxm12 1y agoThe Drive-in will never die.
- boesboes 1y agoOk, what does this have to do with the comment you are replying to? I am genuinely curious how this has any relation to the remarks regarding box office numbers
- hinterlands 1y ago> All the 'box office records' since then are the result of charging way more to a continually plummeting audience size. I don't think that going to the movies has gotten more expensive in real terms. It's just that the records are usually not adjusted for inflation, so a film with the same audience and the same inflation-adjusted admission price will appear to make 80% more at the box office compared to 2002.
- IAmBroom 1y agoIn fact... it looks like they've slightly dropped. https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/14kznfv/movie_ticket_prices_adjusted_for_inflation/ https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/14kznfv/movie_ti...
- xnorswap 1y agoDropped? You've produced a graph showing they've been on the increase for the past 30 years.
- alistairSH 1y agoAnd where the heck can you get a movie ticket for $11? A discount matinee viewing at my local theaters is from $17 to $20. $20-$23 if you go in the evening. The lowest price ticket, a Tuesday noon showing, is $12. I don't recall the last time I went to the movies with my wife and spent less than $60 (tickets, a shared soda, two snacks).
- hinterlands 1y agoMy local Cinemark has tickets for $5.50, $8.50... you're probably in a premium market.
- zamadatix 1y ago$11 sounds about right to me. It's an average so some areas will be higher and others lower but $23 sounds awful.
- litter41 1y agooh wow, Covid really spell the death of movie theaters, and it's never going to recover.
- PaulHoule 1y agoIn my pod we've got the theory that more people in the US like anime than domestic pop culture. All the time my son and I have random encounters with people who like Goblin Slayer or Solo Leveling or Bocchi The Rock but never find anybody who is interested in new movies and TV shows. They say Spongebob Squarepants has good ratings -- of course it has good ratings because it is on all the time. People mistake seeing ads for a movie for anyone being interested in the movie.
- MangoToupe 1y agoMy social circle is into afrobeats and amapiano and, to a much lesser extent, american film. I think people just gravitate towards their niche.
- api 1y agoI don't like (most) Anime (I feel like it's one way I diverge from typical geek culture) but I do often like foreign movies and TV shows more than domestic ones. That's probably an effect too. On the flip side, I've heard the blandness of larger ticket domestic US films in terms of things like sexual, religious, or political themes attributable to global distribution. Many culture are much more sexually conservative, and most overseas cultures outside maybe Canada and some of Europe would not get (or care about) US politics.
- adrianN 1y agoAnime is such a broad genre that it is completely normal to dislike most of it.
- RickJWagner 1y agoWhen movies are made for entertainments sake, they can still do well. ( Top Gun 2, for example ). I’m really looking forward to the Space Balls sequel. I have hopes that one will be good.
- fbrchps 1y agoUnfortunately, Top Gun 2 was not "for entertainment's sake" it was another round of US military advertising/propaganda, just like the first one.
- BobaFloutist 1y agoIf it wasn't sufficiently entertaining, it would be ineffective as propaganda.
- timeon 1y agoIf movie needs number to be distinguishable then it is probably not good.
- allturtles 1y agoGood thing it was called Top Gun: Maverick, then! No number necessary. :-)
- BobaFloutist 1y agoI don't know that I agree "Does the sequel dramatically change the naming convention" is a particularly powerful marker of quality.
- gonzo41 1y agoThe main driver IMO is the death of the tight 90 minute, 80 Million decently acted thriller / action / comedy film. Everything is too big, too epic, too simplistic, and too long.
- 2muchcoffeeman 1y agoI'd be fine with the length if they actually used the time for something good.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoIf I understand movie theater economics correctly, the studio gets 80 to 95% of the ticket sales, depending on how "first run" the movie is. The theaters actually make their money on selling concessions. Well, the longer the movie, the more people feel the need of snacks to get through it. So maybe the theaters are pushing longer movies rather than shorter, because they make more money that way. Just an off-the-cuff hypothesis...
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoBit of a tight line to walk. Longer movies mean fewer showings per day. When I saw that Oppenheimer was three hours long -I want to watch that at home so I can take a bathroom break/snacks so a personal pause button is an improvement on the theater.
- isodev 1y agoI sometimes wonder if we’re using the correct metrics to measure all that. Today, it’s a lot easier to access film and series - streaming, local indie cinemas, YouTube. There is A LOT of movies and yet commentary and awards are always limited to AAA titles and artists. Just the other day, I saw this short on YT and it gave me all kinds of feels and thoughts but even IMDb wouldn’t list it. So maybe, cinema is no longer an exclusive medium for this kind of content and box office numbers (just like revenue for big tech) aren’t supposed to always go “up”.
- schnable 1y agoYes, and "prestige tv" took off, shifting a lot of viewing to 100 hour TV series.
- RationPhantoms 1y agoWhat was the short?
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago2002 was also when broadband internet and movie piracy became more prolific - DivX was just out, DVD burners became a thing, etc. Streaming video was in its infancy, with TiVo and VOD slowly becoming a thing (although that only reached mainstream in 2007 when Netflix launched). DVDs and DVD players became mainstream, as well as flat TVs, HD video, etc. Anyway. The tech in the movie theaters did improve by a lot since then, 3D was a fad but we get 4K, imax, Dolby Atmos, etc nowadays. But it's not as popular as back then, cost and convenience probably being important factors, but the lack of long exclusivity (it's now only weeks sometimes until a film is out on streaming) and the overflow of media nowadays isn't helping either. The last really popular film was the Marvel films and the last Avatar film, other than that it feels all a bit mediocre or unremarkable. I wonder if that's the other factor. The 90's and early 2000s were for many people the highlight of filmmaking - this may be a generational thing. But there were years where multiple films would come out that were still remembered fondly for years or decades after. Meanwhile, I couldn't name you a single good or standout film from the past year or years. Nothing I remember anyway. I think the combination of the LotR trilogy and the Star Wars prequels ruined films forever for a lot of people, in a good way for the former and a bad, cynical one in the latter, lol.
- deafpolygon 1y agoThere is no evidence as to piracy even being a cause for the decline, I say this not as a supporter (I do not pirate) but to correct a misconception. 2002 is when tvs got larger, fidelity with cable tv improved, dvds were readily available, etc. it was also an era where more people started gaming (the industry took off around this time), so people were shifting away from movie theaters as a social activity. The rise of literalism (as in the article) is probably a partial response to increasingly shorter attention spans. Songs are shorter (<3 minutes) and lyrics simpler as a result. People don’t want to think anymore.
- pickledoyster 1y ago> People don’t want to think anymore. Or the bean counters in charge target the largest common denominator, shaving off the long tail of above-average sophistication with every mediocre release.
- ajmurmann 1y agoI wonder how much of that is because the movies themselves changed vs everything else that has changed. Back in 2002 most people still watched tv on CRT that were very small by today's standard and had very low resolution. You either had to go out and rent a movie, rewatch something you had recorded or bought or watch whatever was on and enjoy the ads. Now we have a huge choice of movies and tv shows at our finger tips any time. Yes, the screen is still much smaller than in the cinema but I also sit much closer. I can pause the movie when I need a bathroom break. I can eat and drink what I want. A movie has to be really good for me to want to spend $40-$50 on going to see a movie with my wife. No travel required, no sitting through ads, no risk of someone in the audience being obnoxious. I used to go to the cinema quite a bit. Now I only go once every 1-2 years to see something on IMAX that I hope will really benefit from it. In recent years that was just the two Dune movies and most recently the F1 movie. Unfortunately, even the biggest IMAX theater in my area is still not what I'd consider a proper IMAX like the Metreon in SF so I'm always underwhelmed. Not sure if that's because this IMAX is too small or because even IMAX stopped being amazing due to growth and improvement of other screens. I used to watch a lot of smaller movies in the cinema. That's stopped entirely. With any movie the question now is how long till we just can watch it at home. Smaller movies which I'd be more willing to support frequently even seem to skip the few months where you have to rent them and go straight to streaming. So unfortunately even less incentive to go to the cinema. Culture around it doesn't help either. Friends used to recommend movies that they watched in the cinema. I can't even recall when that happened last.
- cultofmetatron 1y ago> Yes the screen is still much smaller than in the cinema I recently got a a pair of XR glasses (ray neo 3). Pretty much replicates the full cinema experience. Only downside is it isn't a shared experience.
- FredPret 1y agoCan you read text for long periods on those?
- 1y ago
- JohnFen 1y agoThat's roughly when I largely stopped going to see movies. I stopped because movies started sucking too much. Sure, there is still the occasional wheat kernel, but there's so much chaff that it's no longer worth just taking a chance on a new movie.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- zamadatix 1y agoIn 2002, watching a movie at home for most people meant flinging a low quality VHS or DVD onto a ~27" tube TV (with a resolution so worthless it might as well be labeled "new years") using a 4:3 aspect ratio pan & scan of the actual movie. Getting anything recent meant going out to the Blockbuster anyways. In 2022, watching a movie meant streaming something on your 50+" 16:9 4k smart TV by pressing a button from your couch. Box office ticket sales say people go to the theatre less often, not that people watch movies less often. Unless you specifically want "the movie theater experience" or you absolutely have to see a certain movie at launch you're not going to the theatre to watch a movie. The number of movie views per person may well be down (or up), but box office ticket sale counts don't really answer that question.
- ghaff 1y agoAnd probably add to the fact that streaming TV has become vastly more ubiquitous, popular, and high quality. When I was an undergrad ages ago, going to the on-campus movies were a non-trivial part of the weekend experience. My understanding is that they're mostly dead at this point.
- quickthrowman 1y ago> And probably add to the fact that streaming TV has become vastly more ubiquitous, popular, and high quality. The first two I agree with, the third one is a stretch. The quality of programming that HBO was putting out in the mid 90s and 00s is far higher than any streaming series that has ever been released.
- ghaff 1y agoI don't have an HBO sub at the moment. But I do find quite a few mostly serialized TV shows on streaming.
- nozzlegear 1y agoI was going to make this point myself. I think my wife and I have seen maybe three or four movies in a theater since COVID. Our theater didn't even close during COVID (they started marathoning older movies like Harry Potter), but once the big companies started releasing new movies directly on streaming services, we realized how much better seeing a new movie in the comfort of our own home can be. So now we just wait for a movie we want to see to become available on Apple TV, and then we rent it.
- BurningFrog 1y agoMovies had a century as one of the main stages for global culture. That era is ending, and other things are replacing them, mostly based on computers and internet. If you love movies this is sad, but movies once replaced other beloved things. The world spins on and nothing is forever. Enjoy the ride!
- mjd 1y agoEben Moglen observed that at one time people were building giant stone pyramids, then the social and technological conditions changed, and people stopped making new ones. That's OK, it's not a sad thing that there are no new pyramids, we still have the old ones and people still find them awesome. And he says maybe big-budget movies are like that too, something that culture will do for a while and then move on to something different when the conditions change.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago[dead]
- lavelganzu 1y agoI for one want new giant stone pyramids. :)
- mjd 1y agoEcch, you know who would be building them? Mark Andressen. No thanks.
- morkalork 1y agoEven within the medium there was a whole generation of beloved silent-film stars that didn't make the transition to talkies. Every era has a beginning and an end.
- BizarroLand 1y agoI think within the next 20 years we will see the rise of AI generated movies custom fit for your pleasure that will contain information to educate you, images to astound you, a story that will pluck at your heart strings and that you will be able to personally influence by your words and choices and reactions. They'll end up being more like video games than traditional movies, and no two playthroughs will be exactly the same, and eventually you will be able to stay in the movie world and advance the story for days or weeks at a time.
- isk517 1y agoA major contributor to Titanic being the best selling movie by tickets sold is the amount of people that went to watch it multiple times, and going to see a movie multiple times in 1997, while not common, was not unusual because it was 1997 so what else are you going to do?
- snozolli 1y ago1997 was an absolutely phenomenal year for movies. Life Is Beautiful, Boogie Nights, Jackie Brown, Titanic, Donnie Brasco, The Fifth Element, Good Will Hunting, As Good as It Gets, Austin Powers International Man of Mystery, Gattaca, LA Confidential, Men in Black, Liar Liar, Amistad, The Game, Con Air, Contact. There was a lot to do in 1997, just not as much to do without leaving home. We went to movies because they were affordable and great movies were being released. Also, that was the era where new multiplex theaters were being built with great sound systems, so it was worth going to a theater for the high-quality experience. While quality consumer electronics are more readily available today than ever before, I feel like the vast majority today only watch media with headphones, TV speakers, or maybe a 2.1 stereo+sub setup.
- asdff 1y agoIMO actual quality components are still just as remote as 20 years ago. A proper setup is more or less the same technology as it has been for decades: good speakers, good amplifier, placed appropriately, and none of this has really seen any democratization. People buy sound bars and such but these are a far cry to what an actual sound system is like that you probably need to spend in the 4 figures to achieve. Buy enough sound bars that fall apart in a couple years for a couple hundred dollars and you could have bought a proper amplifier, speakers, in a setup that is actually modular, expandable, upgradeable, and serviceable.
- ndiddy 1y agoI have never heard of sound bars falling apart after a couple years, is that common? Every piece of sound equipment I've ever bought has lasted at least 15 years, my sound bar is 5 years old. In general I think the sound bar audience is different from the hi-fi audio audience. I was fine with using the TV's built-in speakers until LCD TVs took over from CRTs and the built-in speakers became much tinnier and quieter because they couldn't fit quality speakers in a flatscreen TV case. I suspect most people who buy sound bars are in a similar situation.
- hinkley 1y agoSomewhere, Cameron admits he rereleased Avatar to theaters ahead of Avatar 2 so it would beat Endgame. He only needed 8 million more to stay on top, he got 134.
- kldavis4 1y ago2002 doesn't look like the interesting year to me. It seems like 2020 and the pandemic is where the most significant drop happened. So we're really looking at post pandemic recovery since that time. How much of the lower numbers are due to theater closures and / or high inflation since then?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- idoubtit 1y ago> Fun fact: movie sales, in terms of tickets sold, peaked in 2002. Fun fact: this is completely wrong. The cinema theaters were much more popular in the 1920s and 1930s, with about 3 times more tickets sold in the USA (out of a smaller population). "In 1930 (the earliest year from which accurate and credible data exists), weekly cinema attendance was 80 million people, approximately 65% of the resident U.S. population (Koszarski 25, Finler 288, U.S. Statistical Abstract). However, in the year 2000, that figure was only 27.3 million people, which was a mere 9.7% of the U.S. population (MPAA, U.S. Statistical Abstract)." in Pautz, The Decline in Average Weekly Cinema Attendance, Issues in Political Economy, 2002, Vol. 11. https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1023&context=pol_fac_pub https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=102...
- ajsnigrutin 1y agoEverybody is talking how tv's got better and sound got better and streaming and dvds... It's still not the same as the cinema experience. But! Cinema tickets used to be cheap, you'd buy some drinks in a store to smuggle in, call a girl you liked, got cheap popcorn at the stand, and for very little money got a fun evening. Now tickets are expensive, popcorn is artificially ultra expensive, to make you buy a "menu" (drinks or sweets added) for just a bit more, better seats are even more expensive, and when you put it all together, it's cheaper to go for a proper dinner in a restaurant. Also, most of the movies suck.
- bityard 1y agoI had an interesting experience taking my son to see the recent-ish Mario movie at the theatre that made me realize that the theatre business really is changing. It was the weekend. Sunday I think. Middle of the day. I hadn't been to this particular theatre before. I bought the tickets online, picked our seats, and then we drove to the theatre. It was in a strip mall on the outer fringes of town, I think they had around 12 screens. So not tiny but not huge. Anyway, we walk in and there is no check-in or ticket-buying counter. There were some signs with QR codes saying you could buy your tickets online, which I had already done. In fact, there really weren't many people around at all, either customers or employees. The first (and mostly only) thing you see is an elaborate concession stand with every kind of (expensive) snack you could want. I bought us a medium popcorn to share and then we wandered over to the hallway where the screens were. There was no desk or person anywhere to verify that we bought our tickets before entering the theater. I flagged down a cleaning person to ask who we showed our tickets to. He just asked which movie we were there to watch and then pointed us to the right screen. So I don't know if this was an unusual circumstance and they just weren't checking tickets that day, or if this is just how they run this particular theater. After the movie, on the drive home, my son asks out of the blue, "Wait, did we even really have to buy the tickets online if they don't make anyone check them?" We had a good discussion about that.
- bombcar 1y agoMost still do cursorily check tickets (sometimes at the concession stand itself) but they’d probably almost prefer you buy popcorn and no ticket.
- duderific 1y agoThat's weird. Where I am, if you buy tickets online you get a QR code. At the theater, there's someone in front who scans your QR code and gives you a physical ticket. That ticket is not really checked, but there is always someone there paying attention to folks walking in.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y agoMovie studios could care less if a billion people watch a movie or if 1 person sees it. They care how much profit they make and what the growth in their profit margin is, as that sets their multiple on their stock price. If it's a better strategy selling movie tickets to mostly single adult men at high prices than to families at lower prices, guess who movie studios are going to make movies for? Movies studios reached their TAM in the West a while ago. The only way to make more money is charging more per ticket in real terms, which means a reduction in TAM
- qoez 1y agoIt's an even worse curve if you'd account for the huge population growth since 2002.
- merelysounds 1y ago> Even for individual movies. For all the men-in-spandex movies, the best selling movie (by tickets sold) in modern times is Titanic, 27 years ago. This looks incorrect, at least according to Wikipedia; its list of films by box office admissions[1] includes a few Chinese movies from the 1980s with higher numbers. Unless the 80s don’t count as modern times - but I’d say it’s not that far from the 90s. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_by_box_office_admissions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_by_box_office_...
- acjohnson55 1y agoThere's a lot of debate in this thread about the merits of watching movies in the theater vs home, but my overall movie watching is way down, regardless of venue. I'm sure I watch less than one movie per month. I used to watch tons when I was younger. Unrelated, I wish there were small screening theaters where small groups of people could watch films on-demand, drawing on a massive catalog.
- littlestymaar 1y agoInterestingly enough, this varies a lot between countries. Also, you graph is way too short-sighted to say it “peaked in 2002”, as in reality it peaked in the 50s (before TV went ubiquitous) when almost ten times as many tickets were sold.