Why We Need Movie Reviewers

[Lexington]

Why We Need Movie ReviewersDespite popular belief, critically acclaimed movies actually sell better.

By Erik LundegaardUpdated Tuesday, July 1, 2008, at 7:07 PM ET

Erik Lundegaard chatted online with readers about this article. Read the transcript.

It's almost a given these days that movie critics are elitist, while moviegoers are populist. When the highest-grossing films get panned by critics, what good are critics? As publishers across the country dump their reviewers, this is not exactly a rhetorical question.

Believe it or not, though, critically acclaimed films generally do better than critically panned films at the box office—if you measure their performance in the right way.

Here are the highest-grossing movies from 2007, along with each film's rating from Rotten Tomatoes, a Web site that quantifies critical opinion. (In the Rotten Tomatoes vernacular, films that garner positive reviews from at least 60 percent of critics are considered "fresh," while those below 60 percent are considered "rotten"):

Top five 2007 films by U.S. Box Office.

You hardly need the Rotten Tomatoes rating. Four of the top five films are sequels; the fifth a sci-fi flick based upon a 20-year-old cartoon, which was itself based upon a toy. None is exactly Citizen Kane. Or even Jaws.

But here's something else they have in common: They were the only five films in 2007 to open in more than 4,000 theaters. Beyond the cause-and-effect question—do people see what studios make available and market, or do studios make available and market only what people want to see?—the popularity of a movie, via box office grosses, is to a great extent a self-fulfilling prophecy. So is there a better way to judge a film's popularity?

Yes: Use a per-theater average. Fred Claus, for example, made $18 million its opening weekend, which, out of 630 films released in 2007, is the 43rd best opening weekend. Not bad. Then you notice it opened in 3,603 theaters, giving it a per-theater average of $5,138. That ranks 246th. Not good. Fred Claus also got bad reviews: a 23 percent rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Call it a coincidence if you like.

A film's per-theater average for its entire history is rarely available to the public, but it is calculable. You simply add up the total number of theaters in which a film is shown and divide that number into its U.S. box office take.

I did this for the 237 films of 2007 with a theater high of 100. After removing the three films that didn't have a Rotten Tomatoes rating, I sorted by overall per-theater average. The top five movies are the same, merely in jumbled order, with Transformers now No. 1, pulling in $12,366 per theater.

But is this even an accurate measure of performance? Articles about the movie industry tend to use "theaters" and "screens" interchangeably, but some films, blockbusters certainly, play on numerous screens in just one theater. Yet we rarely count those screens. Spider-Man 3, for example, played in 27,819 theaters but on 49,392 screens.

So what happens when we sort by overall per-screen average? Some slight movement. Transformers is still No. 1 ($8,887 per screen), but Spider-Man 3 and Pirates 3 drop out of the top five, and I Am Legend and 300 take their places. Plus the art-house movies move up. Paris, je t'aime, ranked 179th by U.S. domestic box office, is, by per-screen average, 43rd, averaging $4,386 per screen. Sweeney Todd, 49th for the year with $52 million, moves into the top 20 in the new paradigm: $5,458 per screen. Both of these films got good reviews.

Things get more interesting when you divide the 234 films into their "fresh" and "rotten" ratings:

2007 movies divided into two categories by Rotten Tomatoes rating.

While there were fewer "fresh" films (i.e., movies that critics liked) and they showed on fewer screens and took in less overall box office, they tended to make almost $1,000 more per screen than "rotten" movies (i.e., movies critics didn't like). So, on a per-screen-basis, more people are following critics into theaters than not.

Source : http://www.slate.com/id/2194532/

Suite : http://www.slate.com/id/2194532/pagenum/all/#p2

[Brock]

c'est completement dependant du budget promo.

[Rincevent]

Je demande une analyse des données plus poussée, et notamment un breakdown des films en plus de deux catégories.