Some say that to be a blockbuster, you just need a simple story. With E.T., it was “I’m here, I’m stuck, and I wanna go home.”

However, there is so much more.

Six Movie Facts

1. Box office is down.

The big dip began with Covid:

2. Many of us prefer watching at home.

Again, Covid marks a turning point:

3. At the movies, we’ve had definitive preferences.

Whether looking at total box office sales or the number of tickets, adventure and action clearly have dominated the movie theater business:

4. And, among the top films during the past 10 years, action and/or adventure were in every one’s description.

Also, most were PG-13:

5. However, family-friendly films are now packing the movie theaters.

With PG-rated movies unusually popular, they’re bringing in more than one-third of all box office revenue: Setting records as the highest grossing animated film of all time, “Inside Out 2” is leading the PG onslaught:

6. And, family-friendly could be bringing people back to the box office.

Families have said it’s like a mini-vacation but much cheaper. (The following numbers are adjusted for inflation.):

Our Bottom Line: Competitive Market Structures

Looking at movie facts, we should not forget the stars and the market structures in which they compete. Along the following scale, there are many smaller similar firms at the far left and one single company to the right. In between, the scale becomes increasing less competitive as firms get larger, fewer, and more powerful.

We could say that, like the largest companies, top movie stars compete as oligopolies. They differentiate themselves through a brand, they have pricing power, and they attract huge audiences.

Now though our stars range from Moana to Dwayne Johnson.

My sources and more: My new and quirky source, Sherwood is great for interesting stories. Here, they tell us the movie facts we need to know about PG movies. From there, researching the industry, CBS,  WSJ,  Axios, the Numbers and the Hustle had the details. And finally, do take a look at an econlife focus on the “Fast and Furious” movie brand.