Interesting.

Concerning the example you used, I first saw the original Despicable Me on DVD, and thought it was freaking hilarious. I saw the other two in the theater, and thought each was progressively worse-- in fact I thought Despicable Me 3 was downright awful. I never would've guessed 2 & 3 did so well-- must be everybody's kids clamoring to see them-- because I just can't see many adults enjoying those last two.

(But if they did, to each his or her own)

DRD MovieMusings-- all of that research you've done is quite impressive; I shall look forward to more of your postings on this subject in the future. And yes, it must be increasingly difficult collecting that information, what with Amazon's secrecy and a previous post you made where you pointed out the difficulty of finding out a film's gross when so many are no longer released theatrically anymore (instead, they are often just streamed on various platforms).

Thanks!

One of my motivations was to somewhat quantify the disconnect between "good films" (in terms of ratings) and "good movies" (in terms of box office). As we all know, great films don't always do well in theatres, and crappy movies can make a crap-ton of money, and these numbers help give us additional cues to explore and muse about other factors may have prevailed for a movie to sell well or poorly.

Regarding kids cartoon movies, they are a gold mine, because kids can't go to movies by themselves, and tend to like to go in groups for birthday parties, etc. And theatres love all the junk food parents have to buy to keep the kids sitting in their seats for an hour and a half. And then there's the merchandising (lunch boxes, pijamas, action figures, cookie cutters, it never ends!) So, it all amounts to a ton of tickets/revenues for all involved. Disney has been raking in big dollars for a long time, they were the box office giants in the 40s and 50s, and are back at it (as well as the other assets they've shrewdly acquired, such as Star Wars, Marvel, etc.)

Regarding the times a'changin', we are indeed living at the precipice of a paradigm shift - theatrical release/box office is giving up ground to streaming, but it isn't like a switch has just been flipped across the industry yet. Eddie Murphy went all-streaming with Coming 2 America, while Tom Cruise's next Top Gun and Daniel Craig's next Bond flick have both been pushed back at least a year, so that they can have that theatrical release and talk/boast about opening weekend gross.

The entire language to which we've grown accustomed over the last half century is becoming obsolete. I'm not sure what new standardizing KPIs will emerge that will help us measure all movies the same when some are released in theatres and some are streaming-only, but we're living in it in real time!

This isn't all bad. Theatres weren't the best way to distribute movies, as they tended to hedge their bets with blockbusters that would sell a lot of tickets by pandering to the lower common denominators. Independent filmmakers hardly could get in on the action. Today, it's much easier for an independent film to get streaming distribution, so today's landscape is much better for discovering compelling stories that, yesteryear, might never have been seen by most people who'd have enjoyed them.

Thanks for sharing this interest with me. I find it fascinating and it's nice not to be alone in the fascination.

And hey - I appreciate your profile :-) and will look forward to your thoughts/contentions/conversations!