The colon (:) and the decline of Hollywood

Happy new year! Yes, this years first ‘The Goody I Found’ is about colons!

I love colons and use them all the time in my texts: probably too much. 😊

But it looks like I’m not alone.
At the end of last year, I stumbled across an article on Artikel auf Stat Significant about the length of film titles and the inflationary use of colons in them.

Last summer films had titles like:
+ ‘Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire’
+ ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’
+ ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’

Where do these long, dramatic film titles come from?
Films used to be called ‘The Shining’, ‘Seven’ or ‘Footloose’ … gone are the days of Superman 2 and Spider-Man 3, replaced by Superman: Man of Steel and Spider-Man: No Way Home … and the colon seems to play an interesting role here.
 
31% (sic!) of all longer film titles in the last few decades with a budget of more than $20 million contain a colon! This makes it by far the most frequently used punctuation mark or word – as visualized in the chart below:

What is the film industry trying to achieve with these long-winded titles?
Author Daniel Parris suspects more than just new-fangled advertising gimmicks.

Hollywood is facing the challenge in shrinking box office returns and quality screens in people’s own homes: to somehow bring people back into the cinema. For him, the long titles are an attempt to resolve the conflict between the familiar and the new: ‘Ah, there’s a new title in this known saga.’
The cinema experience is already promised in these titles: epic, spectacular and unavoidable.
A “must-see” – in film theatres of course and not streamed on Netflix & Co.

By mid-2024, sales at the American cinema box office had fallen by 25%.
Let’s see if more silly titles of sequels with colons will compensate Hollywood loss of revenues in the next few years. 😉

Have a nice weekend,

Lars

PS: Nothing can match ‘Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan’ – best longest title ever 😊.

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