Popular Genres

Genre is probably the least important part of a film other than categorising the film, however, it is still good to view the most popular genres. It also may show some correlation between what distributors are more likely to back if they are faced with a choice.

Below is a table of the top grossing genres from 1995-2012 (Link).

		Movies	Total Gross	Average Gross	Market Share
1	Comedy	1,751	$44,792,158,044	$25,580,901	23.48%
2	Adventure	521	$38,199,674,469	$73,319,913	20.03%
3	Drama	3,132	$33,621,012,632	$10,734,678	17.63%
4	Action	570	$32,066,637,809	$56,257,259	16.81%
5	Thriller/Suspense	561	$15,495,734,985	$27,621,631	8.12%
6	Romantic Comedy	403	$11,286,883,357	$28,007,155	5.92%
7	Horror	329	$9,093,205,812	$27,638,923	4.77%
8	Documentary	1,076	$2,063,950,710	$1,918,170	1.08%
9	Musical	113	$1,865,013,970	$16,504,548	0.98%
10	Black Comedy	85	$781,440,299	$9,193,415	0.41%
11	Western	36	$685,432,870	$19,039,802	0.36%
12	Concert/Performance	41	$293,960,413	$7,169,766	0.15%
13	Multiple Genres	20	$8,280,303	$414,015	0.00%
14	Genre Unknown	5	$1,685,983	$337,197	0.00%

There are a few interesting parts to the table above. First of all, the top grossing film genre is clearly Comedy with the highest market share, however, it is the sixth average gross per film. Adventure being the second most popular genre has under a third of the movies of the Comedy Genre yet averages three times as much. The adventure genre is possibly the most emerging genre with the sixth amount of movies, yet the highest amount of average gross.

Box Office Mojo (Link) offers a more intensive genre index, such as splitting the Action genre into six categories, and displays the number of movies in each category and the number 1 film in that genre, and finally the gross for that number one film. However, a movie as popular as Avatar is featured six times in numerous categories.

An article written by a screen writer (Link) talks about how the 60 top grossing films are majorly action-adventure films with a hint of fantasy, sci-fi or sci-fantasy elements of which 15% are inspired by comic books/superheroes, 27% science fiction and just under 50% were fantasy centred films.