The Ebb & Flow of Movies

Check out this amazing graphic on the NYT website.

It's kind of weird to read, but basically each blob represents a different movie. If you move your cursor over each one, it will tell you which one it represents. Reading from left to right (there's a scroll bar at the bottom) is chronological, with the blob beginning when the movie first appeared in theaters and ending when its box office run ended. The size/color of the blob corresponds to how much money the movie made.

So there's a few things to notice: obviously the "ebb and flow" being the larger blobs in the summer and during Christmas time, while most of the "best" movies of the last 20 years being relatively small; but also look at the length of some of the blobs (ex. look at how long Forrest Gump was in theaters--and particularly, how after the Academy Awards, its sales rise ever so slightly again); also look at how some of the movies are shaped based on how their popularity grew with time (ex. check out the Matrix).

The search function as well as the little summaries/links to NYT reviews are added niceties. I've been playing with this thing all day.