Nice graphic: box office revenues since 1986 | Hacker News Reader

Nice graphic: box office revenues since 1986

nytimes.com

39 pointsmatstc10 comments

I went all the way back to the mid 80's, and the blockbuster back then was Top Gun, which apparently didn't even break 250 mil. Nowadays, we have huge blockbusters that regularly surpass 250 mil every season. Even though we have DVDs and can download copies (pirated or not), collectively, we're spending more on movies than we use to.

However, we don't know whether that's due to more people going to see movies, or merely just an increase in ticket prices. It'd be more interesting to see the graph adjusted for this so we can see if more or less people are going to the movies than before.

It also seems that movies that are series get a second hump, like Jurassic Park III, Harry Potter, etc.

IMAX movies have a looong shelf-life, compared to all other movie types. Mysteries of Egypt was there all the way from 1999 through to the end of 2000, when it had a small resurgence before disappearing.

Less movie goers.

"In 1948, with studios earning all their revenues from the box office, that audience was moviegoers. Even as late as 1980, when the audience had television sets and video players, studios still earned 55 percent of their money from people who actually went to movie theaters. In 2005, however, those moviegoers provided the studios with less than 15 percent of their worldwide revenues, while couch potatoes provided it with 85.8 percent."

From 2005 and still relevant http://www.slate.com/id/2123286

The graphic says it is inflation-adjusted.

Scrolling from left to right, the graphic clearly gets fatter, so revenues are bigger. Ticket prices are a part of that (inflation adjusted dollars are one thing, inflation-adjusted prices are another). A graphic showing ticket sales wouldn't be much fun because it would get narrower every year, with occasional blips like Star Wars, Jaws, Harry Potter, but nothing like the old powerhouses of Wizard of Oz, Snow White, Gone with the Wind, etc.

Yes but Top Gun was made on a budget of $17 million. The focus then was on low-budget, high-concept movies, based on a good story, NOT spending lots of money. Unfortunately, people now think of high-concept as meaning big budget, when that's not the case.

Reminds me of this last.fm visualization by Lee Byron: http://megamu.com/lastfm/

Excellent way to display more than 2 dimensions in 2 dimensions.

Reminds me of this one from 1861 which showed space (map of Europe), time (length of lines), direction (beige for eastward, black for westward), size of army (thickness of lines), and even infers weather conditions (what killed the troops):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Minard.png

Beautiful visualization. Reminds me that it is time to browse my neglected copy of Tufte's Envisioning Information. Thanks

Thank YOU. Reminded me that there ARE other people who own some of the same books as me.

I love Tufte's ideas and design. They are on my reading list. I'll be tackling them after school this summer.

Another thought: I don't know that I'm ready to count the New York Times out yet. I know that Pmarca is doing their deathwatch: ttp://blog.pmarca.com/2008/02/irony-is-dead-l.html

But, I'm seeing some impressive changes over there. With the release of their archives, and some of the changes they're making, I think that it's rapidly turning into one of the best newspaper presences online. Seems like they have some people in the right places with their thinking caps on.

This particular book is one of the four recommended on http://ycombinator.com/lib.html

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