Over the past few weeks the majority of media outlets in the world have been writing about how Avatar surpassed the world’s highest grossing film of all time – Titanic. Cinema and motion pictures are acknowledge today as a major art form, also called the seventh art. At the same time they constitute a major business. Blockbusters can generate millions and more recently billions of dollars. One important source of revenue represents the money collected as admission to film, also called the Box Office.
Besides the critical reviews and awards a movie receives, the pragmatic element (but not the least as importance) of the movie’s triad of success is its financial performance. Rankings and Top ten lists are developed in order to compare the sales performance of movies and related products.
This is how the All Time Box Office (without adjustment for ticket price inflation) looks like at the end of January 2010:
If we take into account different indicators, like Movie domestic grosses adjusted for ticket price inflation or the Movie attendance, we can immediately notice a change in the rankings.
As you can see, different indicators display information that can be confusing for someone who is searching for the most successful movie ever. It is interesting to observe how people are influenced by the Movie box office, which indicates the amount a producer received as admission to the film, and not how many people went to see it, nor how many enjoyed it. The most popular indicator may not always provide the most relevant information in terms of overall success. From this point of view one might say the most successful movie of all times is still Gone With the Wind as it was both a financial success and a masterpiece as an art form.
Sometimes indicators are chosen to provide the desired result for a certain party. In this case, the Box office is used to attract more people to watch a movie: the higher the income, the more positive promotion the movie will receive and the more people will go to attend it. It is important not to rely only on one indicator, but to find the right combination that will provide the best information, and will lead to the best decisions.
Some of the most important metrics for the Media industry – Film and Music have been included in the database of KPI examples provided by smartKPIs.com:
More details
smartKPIs.com database of KPIs – Film and Music
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) – Research & Statistics
Boxofficemojo.com – Worldwide grosses; Domestic grosses Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation
Tags: Avatar, Box office, Brand, Database of KPIs, Film, Gone with the wind, Key Performance Indicators, Library of KPIs, Metrics, Movie, Performance Measures, Retail
Excellent post on what the appropriate KPI’s are. I was having this exact discussion with some friends when the publicity about Avatar came out.
My conclusion was that not only is income irrelevant (apart from inflation, you have things like extra money for 3D glasses, different ticket prices in different countries – eg. a movie costing 20 rupees in India would translate to about a dollar here, so you have no real understanding of the true numbers and hence popularity)
The point I made, and I think is still relevant which I want to make as an addition to your article here is that the pure numbers (attendance) is not enough – we also need to understand he percentage of population that involves.
For example, today, there are oer 6 billion people on the planet. In 1939, there were 3.9 billion people.
If 600 million people saw Gone With the Wind, you’d need around (approximating here) a billion people to see Avatar to be considered in the same leage as in the percentage of people who have seen the movie. Straight numbers aren’t enough…
But then it gets complicated – what year(s) do the people watch, and what is the percentage then, and so on.
The summary though is that you’re absolutely right… the RIGHT KPI’s need to be considered when making broad statements like that.
I have been searcing some movies tops recently and couldn’t help notice that most people forget to watch the criteria when reading such classifications. You made a very interesting and real point.
I recently read a comparative article between Titanic and Avatar. Avatar has over 3000 special effects scenes while Titanic, 500. I believe this is just a glimpse of what we will see in the near future: movies made entirely by special effects. Therefore, it will be even more complicated to rank “all time best movies” since we enter a new area.
It will be almost impossible to compare movies from different times. And even if we could, the the changes in taste and lifestyle will make such a comparison irrelevant.
[...] a vedea analizele, textul original și alte lucruri smart, intrați aici [...]