Since the release of Avatar, it seems like there has been an explosion of movies being released in 3D. And with a hefty surcharge for 3D movie tickets, it is not hard to understand why. But is it true that more and more movies are being released in 3D? And are these movies really dominating the movie industry? On the left, you can see the proportion of movies that were released in 3D from 2006 to 2016, and the revenue generated from those movies. The number of movies being released in 3D has actually been fairly stable since 2011, about a year after Avatar’s release. The revenue from those 3D movies however has continued to skyrocket. In 2016, 3D movies accounted for only 20% of movie releases, but brought in just over 50% of the box office revenue. That means that the average 3D movie brings in 4x the revenue as an average 2D movie. In terms of a box office boxing match, this is equivalent to Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, the highest earning actor in 2016, facing off against a 9-year old boy.
For the Data Wonks
- James Cameron’s Avatar was released on December 18, 2009, and has been credited with revolutionizing the 3D movie market
- Box office data was downloaded from boxofficemojo.com using the r package boxoffice by Jacob Kaplan. Daily box office revenue was downloaded for all movies in the top 10 of each day from 1/1/2006 to 12/31/2016. Box office totals were then tabulated for each movie, and release year was extracted from boxofficemojo.com data.
- An exhaustive list of movies released in 3D was downloaded from Wikipedia. This list was used to designate each movie with box office data as a movie with or without a 3D release. The number of movie releases and total box office revenue from 3D and 2D movie releases were aggregated by year.
- In 2016, 32 movies (20.3%) were released in 3D and 126 in 2D only (79.8%). Total box office revenue from 3D movies was $4987M (50.6% of total revenue) versus $4861M (49.4%) for 2D only releases. Taking the ratio of box office revenue to number of releases for 3D versus 2D movies means that an average 3D movie generates 4.04 times as much in box office revenue as an average 2D-only released movie.
- According to Forbes, Dwayne Johnson was the highest earning actor in 2016, raking in $64.5 dollars that year. ‘The Rock’ weighs in at 260lb according to google. By dividing this weight by the ratio of 3D/2D revenue per movie, you get an analogous weight of 64.4lb.
- According to the CDC a median male of 110.5 months old (9.2 years) weighs 29.2kg, or 64.4lb.
- Heights of Dwayne Johnson (6’5”) and the median 110.5-month-old male (52”) was used to make the relative heights of the cartoons proportionally accurate in the figure as well.
Data on the Rocks 