Declining Number of Film Sales - Truth or False

Establishing a correlation based on just the number of positive reviews and the amount of sales for the film company is premature due to several factors.

First, the movie reviews rarely talk about the economics in the theaters. This is partly due to the fact that the reviews do not want to bore the readers (that's a part of reason why we put ourselves to entertainment and not think about anything serious), but more importantly, they are not trained to discuss economics.

So, anyone who picks up Wall Street Journal or finance section of any major business newspaper can easily figure out the economic status of the country in that time. For such individuals, reading how some film companies are not doing well may not come as much of a surprise, given the fiscal situation that surrounds the nation at the moment.

Second, for the obvious reason, the increase in the number of positive reviews could simply be the product of the increase in the number of total reviewers. Excluding major reviewers like Rotten Tomatoes, it is almost too easy to find reviews of films nowadays with so many bloggers that talk about the movies.

Hence, there may have been just more positive reviews than before but that could also be related to the increased number of total reviews. The best thing would be then to have the average score and percent of positive reviews out of all.

Also, just because a movie receives 9.5/10 on its review does not mean that people will go see it.

Excluding the economic reason, it may be possible that the movies that received positive reviews were mostly comedy or romance while the majority of theatergoers wanted to see horror or action. For these audience groups, it would not matter much how much positive or negative the reviews are if the movie does not meet their interest. It's like asking a stubborn action movie fan to go watch a chick flick. That doesn't happen.

Some reviewers tend to make an assumption that people are not familiar with all the movies coming out in the theater.

While that may be true in rare cases for some people, most people are usually good with having a basic idea on what movies are available on the theater. With internet easily accessible everywhere, people are clearly not out of the loop for upcoming movies, especially when YouTube puts up involuntary commercials about upcoming movies before your video loads up.

Lastly, blaming on lack of advertisement is a poor strategy for film companies. In fact, I would be inclined to say that for some movies, the lack of success is sometimes due to the excessive amount of advertising in newspapers, televisions, and so on.

Advertisement is often credited as the problem because it is the easiest solution to add (not counting the cost). But realistically, it is very possible that the problem all began with the advertisements' effectiveness, which does not always come from just the sheer number that they come.

Overall, the number of positive reviews is not the optimal variable used to explain why there may be a decline in the number of people who go to see the films in the theatre. More information is needed to draw more logical answer to this conundrum for filmmakers.