Reframing the Superhero, Western, and Musical Box Office
Everyone is aware of genres, and there are many observations about the performance of certain genres at the box office, in history and in recent times. Do people really get tired of genres? Every genre is different and it’s worth tracing their history.
The major cliche/comparison people make is that superheroes will go the way of the Western. There’s lots to say about the spirit of either genre, but the box office data is the main interest here. The claim that Westerns dominated in the box office sounds true, but in what way did they actually "dominate?"
We don't have all the old data in box office, unfortunately, so we can't compare market shares between genres and such. And obviously there's a difference in distribution between the 40s to today, plus the rise of television, yadda yadda yadda.
I tried to look at the top 20 films of each year using the-numbers and divide them by genre using imdb, Google, and wikipedia. Since there’s incomplete data, the entire thing is a bit of a fool’s errand. The 40s and the 50s don’t get close to a Top 20 for each year. The 60s is almost a round 200 for the decade, but 1960 only had 14 movies. Again, the-numbers is not 100% accurate so some films (The Searchers, Sergio Leone’s trilogy) didn’t show up even though Wikipedia might have box office data for them. I didn’t include the international films that made very little money since I feel that would defeat the point of the “top movies.” Popularity is what we’re interested in.
Westerns are a genre that’s ostensibly existed since the beginning of cinema--they were definitely talked about in the 1910s--and because cinema's beginning dates to the 19th century, this means that some Western stories in the Silent Era were in the very near past.
“Even in the early days of the film industry, some real-life cowboys and legendary western figures appeared in films:
- Wyatt Earp in The Half-Breed (1919)
- Buffalo Bill Cody in The Adventures of Buffalo Bill (1917)”
https://www.filmsite.org/westernfilms.html
The Western genre had established all kinds of tropes and recognizable narratives in the Silent Era. It was relegated to matinees and serials in the 30s, but saw box office success with Stagecoach in 1939 that leads us into the 40s.
Imdb shows 1100 westerns made in the 1940s with the USA as the country of origin. This is about the total number of westerns, not westerns in the box office.
The 1950s had 836 westerns produced.
The 1960s had 282.
The 1970s had 225.
The 1980s had 62.
The 1990s had 114.
The 2000s had 176.
The 2010s had 465.
Westerns were obviously successful in the 40s-60s, but they didn’t outperform musicals or war films. I’d say they were equal. Ideally, we would be able to look at how many westerns were in the Top 10, 20, 50 of each year but we don’t have that data.
Ironically, the one time a Western was the highest grossing of a given year was toward the end of its supposed “dominance.” Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the highest grossing film of 1969. The Western did not completely die in the 70s, but it was definitely in the lower half of the Top 20 when it would make the list in the years it showed up.
As the data shows, the Western basically died in the 80s.
Here are the points to consider:
- In the very early days, the Western was almost contemporary and mythologized the near American past.
- The “dominance” period that everyone talks about with the Western lasted for 3 decades, but it was likely due to the quantity rather than high performance at the box office.
- Some famous Westerns that we remember like Once Upon a Time in the West were not box office successes.
- Time & Space dependent genres like Westerns and WWII action movies can be fatigued because they become more historical and there’s more limitation in genre hybridity.
I created a kind of diagram to show a difference between genre dominance. It’s not perfect, but I want to convey that superhero films are different to Westerns in production and performance when you tally everything together.
| High Output | Moderate Output | |
|---|---|---|
| High Box Office | Action | Superheroes, Musicals |
| Mid to High Box Office | Westerns | Sports |
| Lower Box Office | Horror (but still profitable) | Independent Religious Films |
The-numbers shows 14 superhero movies released in the 90s. 5 of them were in the Top 20 in their respective years. 66 movies on imdb in the 1990s have the keyword “superhero” attached, but they include movies like Jingle All the Way (because of Turbo Man), TimeCop, and Stir of Echoes.
The-numbers shows the 2000s had 36 superhero movies released in over 1000 theaters. Imdb shows 128 superhero movies with the country of origin USA. My sheet shows 20 superhero films that reached the Top 20 across the decade.
Using the-numbers, between 2010 and 2019, there were 51 superhero movies released in over 1000 theaters. Imdb shows 281 superhero movies with the country of origin USA. A whopping 46 superhero movies made it into the Top 20 for the 2010s. Again, what I personally counted as superhero movies does not line up with the-numbers in each item. The-numbers labeled certain movies as Kids Fiction instead of the creative type of Superhero.
Basically, at the presumed peak of superhero movies, the subgenre had a very high batting average compared to Westerns.
https://www.the-numbers.com/market/creative-types
Because we have more data available for the past 3 decades, we can see how the market share of superhero films has grown. Note that “Contemporary Fiction” is a very broad category where dissimilar movies like Barbie, Skyfall, The Waterboy, Joker, and The Sixth Sense are grouped together. What this means is that superhero films could be higher in market share if you compare them on a genre level like Horror, Biopic, Rom-com, Musical, etc.
Imdb results with Musicals made in the USA:
1940s: 367
1950s: 219
1960s: 139
1970s: 91
1980s: 104
1990s: 98
2000s: 271
2010s: 779
My classification of genre from the-numbers report:
1940s: 34
1950s: 25
1960s: 26
1970s: 9
1980s: 5
1990s: 8 (all Disney)
2000s: 6
2010s: 15 - The-numbers shows 18 musicals released in over 1000 theaters for this decade. I count 15 were in the top 20 across the entire decade.
What this means is that the-numbers didn’t count a lot of musicals since they can only pick one genre. Wide released Musicals did NOT go 15/18 in reaching the Top 20 for the 2010s. The total would be more like 15/28 which is still decent.
So a quick look puts Musicals on par with Superhero films. Not the highest output but very strong results.
Musicals, however, have a rockier history than superhero films. They obviously exploded with the innovation of sound.
“By 1932, however, Hollywood studios had glutted the public's tired appetite and their overexposed song-and-dance epics (often sacrificing plot and character development) went into a commercial decline, coinciding with the height of the Great Depression. There were approximately 60 musicals in 1929, and over 80 in 1930, but by 1931, there were only 11.”
https://www.filmsite.org/musicalfilms2.html
I don’t have the numbers for the 30s, but we know that the Musical was extremely popular for the decade. Taking the data at face value, it dominated in the 40-60s. So it essentially dominated for 40 years. But within that time, there were plenty of ups and downs. By the late 50s, television, aging stars, and high costs led to a decrease although the 60s saw huge success with West Side Story, Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, and others.
“For a few decades (until the 80s), major musicals, whether adaptations or original productions, seemed to have disappeared or fared poorly at the box-office, and were regarded as insipid and overblown.”
https://www.filmsite.org/musicalfilms5.html
The nature of the musical is different from all of the other genres. It’s not like people get tired of music. Doing a cross analysis with the popularity of musical acts, cassette and CD sales, Broadway, opera, and other mediums is too much for one post, but we know that musicals proper were well past their peak in the 70s. Phenomena like Grease and music-centered films like Saturday Night Fever, Dirty Dancing, and Footloose popped up every now and then. Live action musicals were completely dead in the 90s. Sound and Color were great for the musical, but CGI gave the genre a long intermission before it showed up again in the 2000s.
Fingers crossed, musicals are something that can never really die; they just go through different phases.
After all of that, where does this put the Superhero film? 2023 has been a terrible year, however, by the year’s end, the market share will still be on par with the 2010s and higher than anything in the 2000s. The biggest difference with Superhero films is that it’s funneled from 3 studios (Disney, WB, Sony) using 2 major comic book publishing companies (Marvel and DC) and they push connectivity and continuity (MCU, failed DCEU, and upcoming DCU). As we’ve seen with the Western and Musical, they have major hiccups for a year or two or even three in decades of “dominance.”
Simply, I think it’s important to keep in mind the variable of quantity and the not so linear progression of genres “dominating” and failing. Do people get exhausted of genres? Yes. But there’s also generational interest or the lack of it. The Western could never keep up generational interest because of romantic sci-fi concepts during the space race and special effects in film. Everyone was excited to see superheroes on the big screen in a way they couldn’t be done before CGI, and the novelty of that is over as well as the crossovers, maybe. Are the two comparable? Only in a very basic way by saying they reached a peak and then faltered. Superheroes update with the times.
People point to anime and video games as rivals, but they aren’t mutually exclusive to superhero content. My Hero Academia and One Punch Man are successful, and other shonen follow similar superhero story beats.
TL;DR - Looking at genre trends on a numbers basis is difficult because of the lack of data, so sweeping generalizations simplify history too much. The superhero subgenre dominated in a way that is unique. I don’t think it will have a dead zone like the Musical and Western in the 80s and 90s due to its pop culture relevancy that's grown.
Posted Nov 28, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC