The film world is in that lovely city of Las Vegas this week participating in its annual orgy of excess known as CinemaCon. This is when the major studios tout their upcoming big-budget movies and the theater owners get to try new popcorn flavors and other big ticket items that will drain our pockets.
The MPAA, a lobbying organization whose membership is made up of the six big studios, rolled out its annual global and domestic market statistics at the event. The narrative of the press stories from the release of the data is all about how young kids are not abandoning the movies. That’s the narrative they need because in the pipeline for years to come is movies for this audience — PG and PG-13 fare. If the numbers kept going down or there was confirmation that kids were only watching on their phones and not going to the movies, there would be even bigger problems than there are today. But what is happening in general is that it’s not an either/or — it’s an and/plus. People are watching movies in all different types of ways, especially young people.
But the other story is how consistent the gender divide is even though the five top grossing movies had more men than women aside from “Inside Out.” Women account for 51% of moviegoers, men 49%. We still don’t know what movies women or men are buying tickets to, and it’s important to note that the largest ticket buying demographic is 25–39 year olds, and that group, along with 50–59 year olds and over 60s, increased their ticket buying at the highest amounts since 2011.
So my narrative for the report (about the U.S.) would be, make movies for everyone, including older people because they will buy tickets. It’s no coincidence that there has been an increase of movies for adults in the last year or so. They are paying off at the box office: People are going to see these movies.
Here are interesting, important nuggets from the report:
1. 71 cents of every dollar is made outside the U.S. and Canada. (Note: for this study the U.S. and Canada are grouped together.) Global box office is now at $38.3 billion. China’s box office grew 49% last year to $6.8 billion. The closest other foreign country is the U.K. and that is at $1.9 billion. The U.S and Canada markets made up $11.1 billion.
2. 69% of the U.S./Canada population went to the movies at least once in 2015.
3. 12–17 year olds were the highest per capita audience. So that means PG and PG-13 movies will continue to rule.
4. People who go to the movies a lot own a number of other forms of technology.
5. The average domestic ticket price is $8.43.
6. People who go to the movies at least once a month buy 49% of all domestic movie tickets.
7. Hispanics oversample as moviegoers, as do 12–17 year olds.
8. Women are 51% of the moviegoers and 50% of the ticket buyers. This has remained consistent for over five years.
9. 708 films were released in 2015. 147 are from MPAA members or their subsidiaries. 561 were non-member releases. Studio owned releases have gone down 28% in a decade, while independent releases have gone up 44%.
10. There are 40,500 screens in the U.S. 84% of those screens are in place with five screens of more AKA multiplexes.
To read the full report click here.
[via MPAA]
