I shocked, flummoxed, and enraged my coworkers when I told them that I sat down and watched the Star Wars saga (originals + prequels) for the first time a few years ago. I had only seen The Phantom Menace once.
I was surprised by their surprise. I understand the cultural significance of Star Wars and know chunks of the movie thanks to it being this big pop culture thing. I truly think many people my age (28 years old, so 25 BKWSW ((Before Kevin Watches Star Wars))) haven't seen the original Star Wars movies.
I then hypothesized that more people have seen Black Panther than any Star Wars movie — one of my coworkers wanted to come after me with a knife. I believe I'm wrong on that one. The Force Awakens made $2 billion in the box office and The Black Panther made $1.3 billion.
We got talking more about the incredible amount of world viewership these media entertainment empires contain and I hypothesized that more people, currently alive on Earth, have seen a single Marvel movie than people have seen a single Star Wars movie. It looks like the Marvel Cinematic Universe has made $5.3 billion in the box office versus $4.2 billion for the Star Wars series. Those numbers don't paint the whole picture (potential deflation for the original SW movies, etc etc) but I think I'm on to something.
Is there a way to quantify total viewership of media? Help me, Reddit. You're my only hope.
Submitted February 24, 2019 at 12:16PM by kFleish https://ift.tt/2Ea9RgC