Studying movie sequels

Courtesy of BoxOfficeQuant comes this awesome infographic studying whether or not Hollywood sequels lived up to the quality of the original--a pertinent study with The Hangover Part II and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (#4 in the series) set to dominate the box office this summer. The results shouldn't really surprise any of us (below the line means the sequel was worse than the original), but it's interesting nonetheless.

That clustering on the far right side of the graph indicates that the best original movies have a little better chance of producing better sequels--that's where we see movies like Godfather II, Toy Story 2, and The Dark Knight, all of which were fantastic originals with equally entertaining sequels.

Things are a little tougher for mediocre (terrible?) movies like Big Momma's House, Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, and Agent Cody Banks, where the sequels were just stale remakes of material that was already fairly weak, a point that is reflected in the data.

Incidentally, this is some data I'd love to have in front of me to play around with, because I'm kinda bored and this is exactly the type of idle data-crunching that I enjoy (wait a second, there was a sequel to Teen Wolf?). But for now, I'll just enjoy this graphic and then end up ignoring it anyway when I go to the movies this summer.

[BoxOfficeQuant]
(h/t Barry Ritholtz)