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Rotten Tomatoes Scores Don't Correlate To Box Office Success or Woes, Research Shows (polygon.com)
Depending on who you ask, Rotten Tomatoes is the reason some movies don't perform at the box office. From a report: Countless movie executives, including producers, have told Deadline and the New York Times that the number atop a movie's page on Rotten Tomatoes signifying whether the majority of critics enjoyed or disliked a movie rules the box office. Director Brett Ratner was quoted as saying "I think it's the destruction of our business" while others have called for its demise. According to research conducted by Yves Bergquist, director of the Data & Analytics Project at USC's Entertainment Technology Center, that's not correct. Bergquist collected data from 150 movies this year that made more than $1 million at the box office. Using those Box Office Mojo numbers and comparing them to the critic and audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, Bergquist then "looked at [the] correlation between scores and financial performance" to determine if there was a linear line that could be drawn between low scores and bad box office performance. Or, more simply, did a lower "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes equate to box office woes? The short answer is no, it didn't. Bergquist's findings confirmed that of the 150 movies surveyed, there was only a 12 percent correlation between a movie receiving a bad score and not performing well at the box office. Summer films saw even less of a correlation, with seven percent of lower-scored movies not performing at the box office.
Critical success doesn't equal commercial success, but if your movie fails commercially, blaming rotten tomatoes makes for a convenient scapegoat.
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Perhaps the difference is found in what Ratner considers a success and what Bergquist considers a success?
If you need a $2 billion revenue to consider a movie successful, then it probably correlates quite well to the Rotten Tomatoes score.
I don't think you can count Rotten Tomotoes ratings as scientific. There is no validation that the reviewer actually SAW the movie. Also, people who SAW the movie, and liked it, aren't forced to review it. Finally, not every moviegoer uses Rotten Tomotoes ratings to determine if they want to see a movie or not.
So, for Hollywood to base its entire success on RT ratings, is stupid.
Perhaps the Rotten Tomatoes score is low, because the movie is bad, and that's why your box office sales are poor.
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So not really surprised on this one.
The professional reviews are usually way off base loving or hating a film. I go by the public's reviews for a better idea if movie is worth my money. Even then you have to factor in the fanboy effect that will sway the numbers for the first day or even first weekend. Fanboy's are worse than the critics they like anything by . For fanboys its a competition more than if it's good or not like whole Marvel vs DC crowd the Star War fans versus the masses.
I say ignore the professional critics check the reviews of the masses, but factor in if they have a fanboy following.
Alternative interpretation: People will eat shit when shit is the only thing available to eat. People will still spend money on a mediocre film if there is nothing else to watch. This is why all the foreign films and artsy stuff steers clear of summer releases... otherwise they'd get trounced by DC, Marvel, et al. I'm pretty confident that if you control for the season of the release date, and the other films you compete with on release, you'd find the correlation you are looking for.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Rotten Tomatoes seems to get it wrong -- at least from the professional reviewer's standpoint. The audience rating is something entirely different, though. That said, I've also had to question that as well over the past year or so.