US vs UK box office

I read somewhere that the US prefers violence and the UK prefers sex. I think this was in relation to novels rather than films, but I thought I'd check just to see if there were any differences.

Out of the 917 films from the years 2001-2005, there are 672 films for which both US and UK box office grosses are available (IMDb). An additional 26 films list either non-USA grosses or worldwide grosses or both, but I don't know if these films were screened in UK. It should be assumed that at least some other films were screened in the UK but box office data is unavailable for them. IMDb Pro, which I do not have access to, may have additional data.

Table 1
  US UK
mean $60,177,715 £5,430,261
SD $66,616,824 £8,979,658
number of films 672 672

There is a correlation of .740 between the US and UK box office data:

Table 2
  UK
US 0.74*** (37.68)
***significant at p<0.001 (T-value in parentheses)

Films that tend to do well in one country tend to do well in the other, though not exactly in step. No surprise there.

Set the MPAA classifications on a scale from 1-5, as follows:

Table 3: MPAA classification
G PG PG-13 R NC-17
1 2 3 4 5

and set the categories for sex and violence on a scale from 1-6, as follows:

Table 4: Sex/nudity and violence as rated by screenit.com
none minor mild moderate heavy extreme
1 2 3 4 5 6

The average ratings and amounts of sex and violence for US and UK films, 2001-2005 are as follows (with standard deviations in parentheses):

Table 5
  US - full sample US and UK - this sample
MPAA classification (1-5) 3.21 (0.79) 3.18 (0.79)
sex/nudity (1-6) 4.41 (1.33) 4.33 (1.36)
violence (1-6) 4.44 (1.43) 4.56 (1.40)
number of films 917 672
no significant differences between US-UK (this sample) and US (larger sample)

There is no statistically significant difference in either MPAA classification or the amount of sex/nudity and violence between this US-UK sample and the larger five year US sample.

The correlations between box office gross and film rating, sex/nudity and violence are as follows:

Table 6
  US box office UK box office US - full sample
MPAA Classification -0.33***
(-7.35)		 -0.20***
(-4.69)		 -0.33***
(-8.55)
Sex/Nudity -0.34***
(-7.62)		 -0.22***
(-5.09)		 -0.31***
(-8.22)
Violence 0.06
(1.61)		 0.05
(1.30)		 0.11***
(3.55)
***significant at p<0.001; (T values in parentheses)

When film classification is controlled for, the correlations between box office gross and sex/nudity and violence are as follows:

Table 7: Correlations between box office and sex/nudity and violence controlling for MPAA classification.
  US box office UK box office US - full sample
Sex/Nudity -0.18***
(-4.25)		 -0.12**
(-2.90)		 -0.14***
(-4.03)
Violence 0.20***
(5.80)		 0.13***
(3.63)		 0.25***
(8.70)
**significant at p<0.01; ***significant at p<0.001; (T values in parentheses)

The correlations between US box office*sex/nudity and UK box office*sex/nudity are significantly different at p<0.05. The correlations between US box office*violence and UK box office*violence are also significantly different at p<0.05. Sex unsells more in the US than the UK, though it unsells in both. Violence sells more in the US than the UK, though it sells in both.

When you control for both classification and violence, the difference in correlations between box office gross and sex/nudity for the two countries is no longer significant, even though each of the correlations is still significant.

Table 8: Box office*sex/nudity controlling for MPAA classification and violence
  US box office UK box office US - full sample
Sex/Nudity -0.13**
(-3.08)		 -0.08*
(-2.08)		 -0.08*
(-2.36)
**significant at p<0.01; *significant at p<0.05; (T values in parentheses)

In other words, sex is roughly equally negatively correlated with box office for both countries.

Anemone Cerridwen
updated November 17, 2007

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