According to a report recently released by the MPAA the average Hollywood movie in 2006 cost just over 100 million dollars. Sounds like a lot of money until you consider that the total domestic box office was about 9.49 billion dollars. U.S. films brought in even more money over seas, 25.82 billion when combining domestic and foreign totals, a new all-time high.
Tinsel Town Looking More Like Gold
Hollywood movies are big business. Just fewer than 140 million tickets were sold to major sporting events last year. Over the same period of time over 1.4 billion movie tickets were sold across the country. That means that motion pictures attracted 10 times the amount of people that Major League Baseball, The National Football League, The National Basketball Association and The National Hockey League brought in combined.
Hollywood Knows its Customers Well
The average person sees at least seven movies at the theater a year. Caucasian’s see the fewest movies in theaters a year with an average right around seven. African-Americans had a jump in attendance attending on average nine movies in 2006 while Hispanics fell off from almost ten in 2005 down to eight.
When surveyed, 63% of people preferred to see movies in theaters instead of at home. Males under 25 years old preferred to go to the movies about 78% while females in the same age range preferred it 69% of the time. People over 25 years old only preferred the movies to home 59% of the time with males at 63% and females at 55%.
Not surprisingly most of the movies produced are aimed at a younger audience as a result. In 2006, 65% of the movies released were rated PG-13 while only 10% released were rated R. Another 20% of the releases were rated PG with G rated movies accounting for the remaining 5%. The ten highest grossing films in the U.S. were all rated PG-13 or lower last year.
Big Hits Means Big Dollars
It is really not a surprise that domestic box office totals were so high last year. Even though about 600 films were released last year, the top 5 movies made over 1.3 billion dollars by themselves and the top ten made almost 2.3 billion dollars. That means that less than 2% of the movies last year represented over 20% of the domestic box office gross.
Top 10 Movies of 2006 (U.S. Box Office in Millions)
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - $423.3
- Night at the Museum - $250.9
- Cars - $244.1
- X-Men: The Last Stand - $234.4
- The Da Vinci Code - $217.5
- Superman Returns - $200.1
- Happy Feet - $198.0
- Ice Age: The Meltdown - $195.3
- Casino Royale - $167.4
- The Pursuit of Happyness 163.6
Sean Ryan Valinoti - Sean Ryan Valinoti is an actor and a writer. He is the author of Stillborn Dreams: Selected Poems and he will be featured in Live Mansion: ...
