Box Office Mojo is a website that tracks box office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way, founded in 1999. In 2008 Box Office Mojo was bought by the Internet Movie Database, owned by Amazon. The website is widely used within the movie industry as a source of data. From 2002-2011 Box Office Mojo had forums popular with movie fans. On October 10, 2014, the website's URL was redirected to Amazon's IMDb.com website for one day, but the website returned the following day without explanation.
History
Brandon Gray started the site in 1999. In 2002, Gray partnered with Sean Saulsbury and grew the site to nearly two million readers. In July 2008, the company was purchased by Amazon.com through its subsidiary, the Internet Movie Database.
From 2002-2011 Box Office Mojo had forums, which were a popular place for box office "fanatics", and the site at one time was home to several popular movie games and quizzes/tests (e.g., Fantasy Box Office (created in 2006) and Create a Year of Movies), until these were summarily canceled for undisclosed reasons. Box Office Mojo had forums with more than 16,500 registered users. On November 2, 2011 the forums were officially closed along with any user accounts, and users were invited to join IMDB's message boards, even though not all the same features were available there. Tracking is still done very closely to the day by day, actual tabulation of distributors, making it possible to see the general trend of a film's "earnings trajectory".
Box Office Mojo International
The international section covers the weekly box office of 50 territories and includes historical box office information from three more, as well as provides information for box office results for individual movies from up to 107 territories. The site also creates an overall weekend chart, combining all box office returns from around the world, excluding the United States and Canada. The overall weekend chart currently tracks the Top 40 films as well as approximately fifty additional films with no ranking.
Box Office Mojo International also reports the release schedule of upcoming movies for Australia, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Norway, Russia and the CIS, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom. The site additionally has yearly and all time features for its various territories. Box Office Mojo was as of June 2009 reporting limited data from overseas and is "work(ing) on improvements". Many of its international charts have not been updated since November 2014 (as of April 2015).
Redirection to IMDb, October 2014
On October 10, 2014, all traffic to Box Office Mojo was redirected to IMDb's box office page, before returning the following day.
Queries about the closure to IMDB and Amazon representatives were met with no response. Brandon Gray, who founded the website but left several years ago after its sale to Amazon, nor current operator Ray Subers would respond either. On Ray Subers' Twitter account, he revealed the websites return, but also stated he would not answer any questions pertaining to closure.
References
External links
- Official website