One of the quickest ways to feel like an entertainment insider is to analyze the weekly box office. Each Sunday night, we’re bombarded with news about which movie made the most money over the weekend and whether or not any upcoming movies can unseat America’s top film.
Why Paranormal Activity was one of the most successful movies ever made, in one chart
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.
But not everyone knows what all these numbers mean. An indie movie that opens to $10 million is usually doing really well, while a blockbuster’s $10 million opening would mean instant death. What ultimately matters is how much a movie makes in profit.
Randal Olson, a fourth-year computer science graduate research assistant at Michigan State, culled data from Box Office Mojo and put those profit ratios into some handy charts. He looked at the most profitable movies since 1982:
(Randal Olson)
It’s staggering to see just how much Paranormal Activity made (versus the cost to make it), and it also explains why movies in that franchise keep getting produced.
He also found the movies that studios took the biggest net losses on:
(Randal Olson)
Olson also calculated which movies had the highest loss ratio, giving us a better look at lower profile stinkers:
(Randal Olson)
A thing to keep in mind is that these profits are calculated based on a movie’s original budget — they don’t take into account the money spent on marketing and promotion that go into these films. Olsen explains that he “divided the profits by half to account for movie theaters keeping a share of the ticket sales, taxes, etc.”.
The numbers are also based on US box office numbers, meaning a movie that does well overseas and breaks even could still look like a stinker on these charts.
Olson has more charts over on his site.
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