Since 2009, the number of Hispanic moviegoers has increased to 20 percent while the numbers of African-American and “other” moviegoers have stayed relatively the same. The percentage of white moviegoers has decreased slightly during that same period.
If we want to break this down further, we can look to the top-grossing films of 2013. Man of Steel, the reboot of Superman, drew in the most ethnically diverse audience. Its box office numbers show that 50 percent of Man of Steel moviegoers were white, 15 percent were black, 16 percent were Latino and 19 percent were Asian or other.
Blacks, the MPAA reports, contributed 22 percent of the box office revenue for Iron Man 3. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, on the other hand, had a more heavily Caucasian audience than the other blockbusters; whites contributed 64 percent of its box office earnings.
So what movies will draw ethnically diverse audiences this year?
Cesar Chavez is in the news lately and earned $3 million at the box office this weekend. The film, which critics have generally spurned, is still, like many other biopics, considered a “must-see.” Deadline.com refers to the movie’s reception as having “disparate results” and that it “lured a strong following in areas he was active.” (Chavez is being shown in limited release at 664 theaters around the country.)
Earlier this year, I wondered if 2014 would be the year that folks stopped being shocked that people of color watch films. To make that point, I looked to films that had largely minority casts or were marketed to audiences of color. This report suggests that even more evidence is elsewhere.
We consider movies like Instructions Not Included and Cesar Chavez as indicators of Latino (or minority) moviegoing — but should we? The MPAA findings hint that the indicators for the power of the Latino audience are all over the box office, not just concentrated among “Latino” films.
Article Appeared @http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/04/04/297285349/whos-boosting-box-office-numbers-report-says-latinos