Graph 1 and Graph 2 show that the peaks of summer movie sales were 7/17 (driven by Harry Potter) and 7/3 (driven by Transformers). However, Graph 3 and Graph 4 show that Harry Potter, Transformers, and Green Lantern have the shortest half-life (time it takes for their weekly revenue to decrease by half of its opening earnings). Thor and Super 8 have the longest half-life.
Graph 1 shows the cumulative total of summer movie sales.
Graph 2 shows the totals for each summer movie (note that Captain American and Harry Potter are still going kind of strong).
Graph 3 shows the delay rate of the summer movies.
In Graph 4, the half-life of Harry Potter is 0.7 weeks, Transformers is 0.97 weeks, Green Lantern is 0.76 weeks, Super 8 is 1.5 weeks, and Thor is 1.1 weeks (the x-axis is number weeks from opening day).
Thoughts:
I thought it was interesting how quickly people lost interest in Green Lantern and how quickly it got over shadowed by Cars 2. It was also interesting to see how well Hangover did, especially since it came out only a week after Pirates. Thor and Super 8 held in pretty well (you still see Thor advertisement here and there) considering it didn't make the big bucks. (I'm guessing Thor did well because it was the first superhero movie of the summer and I'm guessing Super 8 did well because it was just something different.) Harry Potter and Transformers was not a surprise but I was kind of happy to see Captain America kick Harry Potter out of the number one spot.
