Bad Movie Index

Background

What happens if you compare the streaming giants’ top movies with their ratings on major movie rating sites? The “Bad Movie Index”, created by Draken Film, Sweden’s leading streaming service for quality cinema, inspires people to broaden their film taste with the first-ever moving subscription price.

Idea

The “Bad Movie Index” let us take a closer look at the top ten lists of movies from the world’s top five streaming giants. When adding the respective movies’ ratings from two major movie rating sites into the equation, the truth behind our movie-watching habits was revealed.

“At Draken Film we put our heart and souls into carefully selecting films that offer something extra to the viewer and broaden their view of what quality film can be. By lowering our prices when the Bad Movie Index goes down, we hope that more people will discover and be inspired by our selection”, said Mirja Wester, CEO of Draken Film and Göteborg Film Festival.

“The Bad Movie Index not only shows us what movies people like to watch and how it varies over time. First and foremost it opens up for a conversation about what quality films really are, and how personal taste can be.” Watch the short film about Bad Movie Index on YouTube > The Bad Movie Index continuously collected and analysed viewer data from Draken Film’s home country Sweden. It compared the top 10 films on each streaming service with their ratings on two major movie rating sites. The result wass an index that varied over time depending on what’s on the top lists.

As the index fluctuates, so did the monthly membership price of Draken Film’s own quality film streaming service. When the index hit its’ lowest levels, Draken Film offered a monthly price of 29 SEK (3.3 USD, 2.9 EUR), but if the index showed that people streaming highly rated movies, the price rose to 109 SEK/month (12.5 USD, 10.7 EUR) – compared with the regular price of 89 SEK / month (10 USD, 8.8 EUR).

The result shown on www.badmovieindex.com visually resembled the stock price indexes we’re used to seeing on financial sites. But instead, it offered an almost live view of the perceived quality of the movies that were being streamed across Sweden.

“Draken Film has a thorough process when we select films. We strive to offer a broad selection of quality films, many of which you won’t find on traditional streaming sites. Instead, we try to inspire, even challenge our viewers to discover quality films from all over the world, in all genres”, said Jonas Holmberg, Artistic Director at Göteborg Film Festival.

But had U.S. viewers been streaming more or fewer quality movies during the pandemic? And who had the best taste, the French or the British? In addition to the unusual pricing in Sweden, Draken Film dug deeper into the data, revealing the truth about movie-watching behaviors also in the U.S., UK, Japan, Brazil, India, Germany, France, Denmark and Norway.

• In general, 2021 so far seemed to be a better year for move-watching than the data from 2020 told us. Across all countries, the Bad Movie Index rose by 2,6%, from 6.4 to 6.8.

• Across the entire period, Brazil had the lowest Bad Movie Index of all countries (6.43), while India only was slightly better (6.58).

• Japan had the highest Bad Movie Index during the entire period (7.03), closely followed by the UK (6.97).

• Having time off doesn’t necessarily mean watching better movies. Instead, it seems many countries had their lowest Bad Movie Indexes during Christmas, followed by Easter. For the U.S., weeks 49, 50 and 51 had the lowest index recorded during the period.

• The British beat the French when it comes to the Bad Movie Index (6.97 vs 6.80). But on the other hand, the French had both higher maximum and minimum indexes than the Brits.

• In general, most countries had a higher Bad Movie Index during 2021 than the recorded weeks 2020. The U.S. index rose by 3.7% and the UK by 2.0%. However, they were both far behind Norway, whose Bad Movie Index was 6.4% higher than 2020.

• But not all countries had a higher Bad Movie Index 2021. Two countries had actually lower index 2021 than 2020: Germany and Japan (-0,4% and -0,3%).

Visit the website and learn more about the index and the sources behind it: www.badmovieindex.com Another round of the supercycle, or a sudden index collapse? - Technical analysis, Bad Movie Index week 39 After a summer of major index fluctuations, in recent weeks the Swedish film-consuming audience has seen film consumption remain stable across a 200-day sliding mean value. Following the film festivals in Venice and Toronto, where several forthcoming VOD-exclusive films got a potentially index-impacting reception, we are now at a crucial crossroads. What impact will the reopening of cinemas have on the home film streaming audience, will traditional seasonal patterns have a negative index effect in the fourth quarter, or is now the last chance to enter the market at a discount? The pandemic year has had an enormous impact on the film industry and thus also on the Swedish audience’s film watching habits. Films that have traditionally had a long life in cinemas have instead been released directly – and often exclusively – on VOD platforms, which has created considerable interest in watching films from home. Via the Bad Movie Index we can over time monitor aggregated data covering the most-seen films on the biggest streaming services, and by weighing in averaged figures from film audiences and critics collected from IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, we gain a wide-angle snapshot of how good the films are that consumers are watching. After a shaky summer, in recent weeks the index has started climbing to ever higher levels and is currently stable above the annual average. Since the average level weighs together the most-seen films from the biggest streaming services, it is unusual for individual films to impact the index, but at the end of September 2021 we can discern an almost perfect autumn storm of films that are interacting to elevate the entire streaming market to a level above the crucial 6.86 marker. The explanation lies partly in a strong top list on Disney’s streaming service where the Frozen films – as so often – are firmly parked in the lower half, while the summer’s success story Luca remains firmly in place and Cruella – just released to a broader audience following the Premier Access window – has clinched the top position. The other part of the explanation is the strong trend we see in TVOD, where an early VOD release of the critics’ favourite, A Quiet Place Part II, attracted a large rental audience, together with the monumental success of Thomas Vinterberg’s Oscar-winning Another round which tops the Swedish list on iTunes. In the rental-film sector there are many titles clinging to the top of multiple rental services simultaneously, giving the individual films unique leverage that platform-exclusive SVOD films find it difficult to break through. As in previous weeks, HBO’s list is topped by Harry Potter (all the films have an average rating above 7.0) which has forced up the mean rating from the spring. The high index ratings of the past few weeks suggest a healthy appetite for truly good film among the Swedish home audience, and all the indications are that audiences will continue to stream movies to the same extent throughout the autumn too. At the early-autumn festivals in Venice and Toronto we saw several really strong streaming-marked titles with index-impacting potential, from Jane Campion’s Silver Lion-winning The Power of the Dog and Paolo Sorrentino’s The Hand of God, to the Gustav Mo¨ller remake The Guilty, all of which have the potential to score good market penetration thanks to high critic ratings. However, this autumn’s trend is fighting a strong headwind against established seasonal patterns. Traditionally, the rating averages for streamed films tend to drop as Christmas approaches. Last autumn’s lists of top films were characterised by rom-coms that scored low by the critics, which is fairly typical for the fourth quarter. Bottom ratings for the year are often scored in week 51 before the index slowly starts to rise once again, and there are strong indications that this pattern will be repeated this year too. As pandemic restrictions are lifted and cinemas announce an overnight increase in seating capacity, it is reasonable to expect the public to prefer the cinema and to want to see the very best films in the ambience of the cinema rather than at home. In the longer term this may mean a swing in audience behaviour, causing films with the highest average ratings to be reserved for the cinema while films that score lower have a proportionately greater representation in the index. At the time of writing we note an index level of 6.95 which means that Draken Film is being sold at a significant discount, just 69 kronor a month. Despite the fact that seasonal patterns and several leading indicators suggest a sudden bull market, we believe that the unique post-pandemic effect may continue to raise the index and move the spot price of Draken Film to a premium value. We therefore repeat our purchase recommendation at index levels below 7.03 for the coming week too. Olle Agebro, streaming analyst

Results

Reach: 11M+ New memberships: +18%