Domestic Movie Theatrical Market Summary 1995 to 2016

Welcome to our reference library analyzing trends in the domestic movie industry since . In this area of the site, you'll find over 2,000 pages of information detailing the changes that have shaped the industry.

Our market analysis is built on The Numbers' unique categorization system, which uses six different criteria to identify a movie. Every movie released since 1995 is categorized according to the following attributes: Creative Type (factual, contemporary fiction, fantasy etc.), Source (book, play, original screenplay...), Genre (drama, horror, documentary etc.), MPAA Rating, Production Method (live action, digital animation etc.) and Distributor. Our market charts provide year-by-year analysis across these categories, allowing analysis of market trends. See, for example, how horror movie revenues have varied, the emergence of digital animation and live action/CGI animated movies, and the decline (and possible rebound) of R-rated movies. To explore, click on an individual year, distributor, genre, creative type, production method or MPAA rating to see annual trends in a particular category.

Note: in order to provide a fair comparison between movies released in different years, all rankings are based on ticket sales, which are calculated using average ticket prices announced by the MPAA in their annual state of the industry report.

Annual Ticket Sales

	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Tickets (billion)	1.22	1.30	1.38	1.44	1.44	1.43	1.47	1.58	1.52	1.49	1.37	1.40	1.42	1.36	1.42	1.33	1.28	1.38	1.34	1.27	1.34	1.18
Revenue ($bn)	5.30	5.76	6.35	6.76	7.34	7.70	8.29	9.15	9.19	9.28	8.81	9.18	9.76	9.78	10.64	10.51	10.19	11.02	10.93	10.37	11.30	9.96

Note: Figures for 2016 are at an annualized rate.

Top Movie of Each Year

This table lists the top-grossing movie for each year, based on tickets sold for each movie during the course of the year. Click on the year to see a detailed breakdown for the market as a whole in that year.