Back in January, I looked at the most profitable films of 2011. Last week, Scott Meyers looked at 2011′s most profitable movies across 22 different story types. Not really sure what that latter graphic proves, except perhaps that tragedies don’t make any money. As Meyers points out, many of these “genres” are fairly similar (is a “journey and return” really that different than a “quest”?).
Meyers also (correctly) points out, as I did, that very few of the most profitable films had huge budgets. This is to be expected, though – the films that recover $100 million at the box office will be the ones with the biggest buzz. Most of these will be the ones with the most marketing dollars spent, which will be the biggest budget movies. But a handful of films will win the proverbial lottery, hitting those same box office numbers but on a much lower budget. These will, by definition, be more profitable.
