Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).
Source: Everett Collection
How Space Movies Rule the Hollywood Box Office
What 100 sci-fi films tell us about America’s interest in outer space.
Movies about outer space have been big moneymakers in recent years, thanks to the third phase of the Star Wars franchise. The Walt Disney Co.-produced installments topped the box office in each of the last three years and helped set a record in 2016, when space-themed films accounted for 14 percent of the top 100 films at the domestic box office.
That’s compared to 4 percent on average since 1950 and an all-time low of zero percent in 1966, according to an analysis of box office data from Amazon.com Inc.-owned IMDb and its subsidiary, Box Office Mojo, about the top 100 grossing films with keywords “space,” “outer space,” “space travel,” or “space ship.”