Final Data Report

In the past two decades, only two of the #1 highest grossing films in Canada and the U.S. were in a genre other than science fiction or fantasy. Of the top five highest grossing films in Canada and the U.S., only one of them, The Dark Knight, was a crime thriller.



Before I get into the nitty-gritty of why this is, it is important to go over some relevant box office terminology for the uninitiated. Luckily, Box Office Mojo has a glossary of terms that we can refer to. The terms I'm going to be focusing on, however, are "gross" and "ticket price inflation". "Gross" refers to a film's earnings at the box office in U.S. dollars. Usually, a film's total gross is split right down the middle and divided among the film's distributors and exhibitors (theatres). "Ticket price inflation" is an estimate of how much money a film would make if it was released in any other year than its initial release.

The only term that isn't defined by Box Office Mojo is "domestic" (as in "domestic box office" or "domestic gross"). The distinction of this term is important, as not a lot of people know exactly what it means. According to the "box office recording" of this Wikipedia article, "domestic" is defined as Canada and the U.S.

Now that I got that out of the way, I can move on to the question of why science fiction and fantasy films are so popular among us Westerners.

It should come as no surprise that the reasons why we gravitate towards science fiction and fantasy are due to either escapism or social commentary. Escapism is easy: life sucks and we need something to distract us from whatever the hell is screwing us over. Take Shrek 2, for example. It's not exactly deep, or influential, by any stretch of the imagination. It's dumb fun meant to cheer us up.

For the social commentary aspect, let's look at a film that's not on the bar graph: Starship Troopers. According to the Nerdist article, 7 Reasons Starship Troopers Was Way Ahead of Its Time, Paul Verhoeven's 1997 satirical cult classic deals with heavy themes such as fascism, the exploitative nature of reality TV, and colonialism. The article states, right at the beginning, "It's an overblown shiny action movie, parodying overblown shiny action movies and every thing they represent."

Like all cult classics, it was met with critical and commercial disdain, but has gained a more positive reception over the years, as audiences and critics have come to recognize what the film is trying to accomplish.

However, there is an elephant in the room that must be addressed: what is the #1 highest grossing film of each year, from 1997-2017, when adjusted for inflation? As mentioned above, "ticket price inflation" is an estimate of how much money a film would make if it was released in any other year than its initial release.



As you can see above, the #1 highest grossing film, when adjusted for inflation, is Titanic. Obviously, Titanic is neither science fiction nor fantasy. However, it is also directed by James Cameron, who is most well-known for his science fiction films. This could possibly give insight as to why it dominates alongside the other sci-fi and fantasy films on the graph.

It should also be noted that, as explained on this Box Office Mojo page, that ticket price inflation isn't an exact science, as it doesn't take into account certain factors, such as the economic conditions at the time, or the amount of films released that year.

Regardless of whether or not certain films are adjusted for inflation, the overwhelming amount of science fiction and fantasy films that have reached the #1 spot each year should be enough proof of both genres' popularity.

Data Update 3

Chart



Unanswered Question

What is the budget for each film listed? Although this question seems relatively straightforward, I feel it would be quite interesting to compare each film's budget with their total domestic gross, especially to see if their is a disparity between a film's popularity and profitability.

For example, let's say their are two films called Movie A and Movie B. Movie A was made on $2,000,000 budget and made $4,000,000 at the box office. Movie B was made on a $30,000,000 budget and made $20,000,000 at the box office. While Movie B technically made more money than Movie A, Movie A actually made a profit.

How would you get the data?

I can think of at least three different ways to find the budget for each film. Firstly, I can simply google something along the lines of, "budget of highest grossing films from 1997-2017." Secondly, I could click on the link for each film in the original dataset and look at that film's budget. Thirdly, I could email Box Office Mojo and ask if they have a list of each film's budget.

Tableau Demo

Data Update 2 - Domestic Box Office

Lead

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the highest grossing film from the years 1997-2017, and had the highest opening weekend. Godzilla (1998) is the lowest in terms of both total gross and opening weekend.

Excel Workbook Link and Explanation

Original workbook.

The "Slice" tab of my spreadsheet is organized by "Total Gross", from largest to smallest. This shows that Star Wars: The Force Awakens had the highest total gross, and Godzilla had the lowest. If you were to organize the spreadsheet by "Opening Weekend", both films are in the exact same spot.

Original Dataset Link

Original dataset.

News Story/Study Link and Brief Summary

'Star Wars: Force Awakens' First Ever to Cross $900 Million Domestically

This news story shows that Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the first film ever to cross $900 million domestically at the box office. It then goes on to say that the film has passed both Avatar and Titanic. The article is capped off with two top five record holders lists, one being domestic box office, and the other worldwide.

Data Update 1

1. What dataset will you use for your final report? (describe your dataset and include a link to it)
• The dataset that I will be using for my final report is the Domestic Opening Weekend Box Office From 1986-2018, which lists the #1 film of each consecutive year and how much money said film made at the box office. I'll most likely omit 2018, however, because that year literally just started.
2. Describe the dataset. What kind of data does it contain?
• The dataset contains the #1 film of each year, the amount of money a film made upon its opening and that percentage of the film's total gross. The dataset also contains the amount of theatres each film opened at and what I assume is the average amount of money theatres made. Finally, the dataset lists the total gross of each film.
3. Is there anything about your data that you don't understand? (i.e. what a column heading means). How will you find out?
• I understand most of the data due to the fact that I am obsessed with movies, but some of the headings are a bit vague.
• The heading that reads, "Opening / % of Total," doesn't make it clear whether or not the table lists the revenue for opening day or opening weekend. To find this out, I could simply click on the link of one of the films on the website.
• The heading that reads, "Theaters / Average," doesn't specify what the average is of. I could find this out by dividing the amount of theatres from the value of each revenue in the table.
• One final thing that I'm curious about is if the older films are adjusted for inflation. I could find this out by doing a simple google search of the oldest film in the table, with the keywords, "adjusted for inflation," and comparing the values in the table.
4. What are some questions you hope to answer with your data? List at least three.
• Which #1 film had the highest total gross?
• Which #1 film had the highest opening?
• Which #1 film opened in the most theatres?

Data Visualization Analysis

"Perusing the New York Times #1 Best Seller List" is, appropriately enough, a visualization that analyzes the amount of #1 best selling books per year, from the 1940s up until 2017. The visualization is divided into three graphs:

"Books Reaching #1 by Year"

"The Rising Popularity of Mystery/Thrillers"

"Who are the Authors and What are the Books?"

The thing about this visualization is that, while the graph does a great job at giving the reader a gist of the information, the finer details of the data are a bit harder to find. A lot of this is due to the interactivity. Although the interactivity itself mostly works, it could have been used to better effect by giving the data a bit more clarity.

When it comes to the first graph, there are two main issues: the scrubber to the left, showcasing the book list for each year and month; and the seemingly random mentions of The Bridges of Madison County, The Da Vinci Code, and Fifty Shades of Grey.

The problem with the scrubber is that it is difficult to use if you want to look at an exact year, and a drop-down menu and/or search field would have been much more user-friendly. In regards to the book titles on the graph, it turns out that they are the three books that held the #1 spot the longest for their respective years. This is difficult to discern at first, and it would have been helpful if a pop-up of some sort showed this information once you hovered over each title.

The biggest flaw with the second graph is that each chart stops at the year 2010, a full seven years early.

I feel that each chart could have been streamlined into one, with each genre having its own colour-coded line. I'm also a bit confused as to why "fiction" is its own category, when the other genres are also fiction.

The third graph, however, is fairly straightforward, showing the top ten authors and books, with interactive filters for genres and specific authors.

Embed Code Test

Embed chart:

Right up there.

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