Best Thing I've Read Today

Hollywood is trying to figure out why box office numbers are down so dramatically this summer. Their thinking: it can't possibly be because the movies haven't been very good -- there must be some external factor. Aha! Maybe we can pin the blame on the Rotten Tomatoes website, because all the negative reviews on that site are keeping people away from the theaters.

Yves Bergquist, who manages the Data and Analytics Project at USC’s Entertainment Technology Center, decided to run the numbers:

I collected box office return data through Box Office Mojo for all the 150 titles released in 2017 that grossed more than $1 million, plugged in Rotten Tomatoes Scores and Audience Scores for all titles, and looked at correlation between scores and financial performance....

The result? Nope. The math is pretty overwhelming in saying there was no (positive or negative) correlation in 2017 between Rotten Tomatoes Scores and box office returns.

See Berquist's full research summary here.

Labels: movies