Question: Do family movies targeted towards children do better in the box office than movies for a more general audience?

Hypothesis: I believe that movies for children and families receive larger revenues than movies for older and more general audiences because they include franchises and sequels that are produced the most and have been proven in the past to make the most money.

Method

Independent Variable: Type of movie (children/families v. general audience)

Dependent Variable:Average yearly gross domestic box office revenues in dollars

I will sort the top 20 grossing movies for 3years into for children and for general audiences, over 4 years. Then I plan to find the average gross box office revenue of each category in each year and compare the two averages to each other. I will take the average instead of a total to control for the difference in number of movies made for children and for general audiences, even if the ratio of the two types is uneven in the top 20. I will control for inflation by only comparing movies of the same year to each other. The trend analysis will be a side-by-side, parallel over time. I plan to only use domestic US figures to control for international market factors.

Data

2012 –

For Children/Families: CALCULATED AVERAGE194460494.8

  • Brave$237,283,207
  • Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted$216,391,482
  • Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax$214,030,500
  • Wreck-It-Ralph$189,422,889
  • Ice Age: Continental Drift$161,321,843
  • Hotel Transylvania $148,313,048

For General Audiences: CALCULATED AVERAGE273433795.1

  • Marvel’s The Avengers $623,357,910
  • The Dark Knight Rises $448,139,099
  • The Hunger Games $408,010,692
  • Skyfall$304,360,277
  • The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey $303,003,568
  • The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 $292,324,737
  • The Amazing Spider-Man $262,030,663
  • Ted $218,815,487
  • Lincoln $182,207,973
  • MIB 3 $179,020,854
  • Django Unchained $162,805,434
  • Snow White and the Huntsman $155,332,381
  • Les Miserables (2012) $148,809,770
  • Taken 2 $139,854,287

2011 -

For Children/Families: CALCULATED AVERAGE162395443

  • Cars 2 $191,452,396
  • Kung Fu Panda 2 $165,249,063
  • Puss In Boots $149,260,504
  • Rio $143,619,809

For General Audiences: CALCULATED AVERAGE: 213231397.1

  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 $381,011,219
  • Transformers: Dark of the Moon $352,390,543
  • The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 $281,287,133
  • The Hangover Part II $254,464,305
  • Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides $241,071,802
  • Fast Five $209,837,675
  • Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol $209,397,903
  • Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows $186,848,418
  • Thor $181,030,624
  • Rise of the Planet of the Apes $176,760,185
  • Captain America: The First Avenger $176,654,505
  • The Help $169,708,112
  • Bridesmaids $169,106,725
  • X-Men: First Class $146,408,305
  • The Smurfs $142,614,158
  • Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked$133,110,742

2010 –

For Children/Families: CALCULATED AVERAGE 245345778.7

  • Toy Story 3 $415,004,880
  • Despicable Me $251,513,985
  • Shrek Forever After $238,736,787
  • How To Train Your Dragon $217,581,231
  • Tangled $200,821,936
  • Megamind$148,415,853

For General Audiences: CALCULATED AVERAGE208893286.9

  • Alice in Wonderland (2010) $334,191,110
  • Iron Man 2$312,433,331
  • The Twilight Saga: Eclipse$300,531,751
  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 $295,983,305
  • Inception $292,576,195
  • The Karate Kid $176,591,618
  • Tron Legacy $172,062,763
  • True Grit $171,243,005
  • Clash of the Titans (2010) $163,214,888
  • Grown Ups $162,001,186
  • Little Fockers$148,438,600
  • The King’s Speech $135,453,143
  • The Last Airbender$131,772,187
  • Shutter Island $128,012,934

Results

Analysis

My hypothesis was mostly incorrect in that children’s movies on average make less in box office sales, however there are a few factors that could be skewing the data. One consideration is that some years there were more kids’ movies in the top 20 than other years, especially 2010, which ended up being the only year where I was correct. The top-grossing movie of 2010 was in this category – Toy Story 3, and several other popular animated films such as Tangled and Despicable Me came out that year, spawning franchises and extending others.

There also may be some discrepancies in how I decided which movies went in which categories. I decided that movies like Alvin and the Chipmunks were for a general audience because it wasn’t specifically made for children and families – it has more adult jokes and is more a ridiculous comedy than child-oriented animated feature. Movies like Brave were chosen because they were specifically made for kids. However from personal experience most people I know who saw Toy Story 3 were sentimental teenagers and college aged students, so just because a movie is geared toward children doesn’t mean its main audience will end up being a majority of kids. There were also a large number of adaptations, sequels and remakes, which bring in the proven “sequel factor”. This may have taken away from any specific effects that audience targeting would have on box office revenues. If I were to recreate this study I would probably do the same thing with the top 100 movies and do it over about 10 years. Increasing the sample size might make trends more easily visible.

Overall I think this study showed the “sequel effect” more than the effect of children’s movies. Sequels of either category brought in top revenues, skewing the data either way. While children’s movies do take up a significant portion of the top grossing movies each year, the difference in number of children’s movies produced and number of general audience-geared movies produced makes it harder to compare.