Best and Worst Months for Movies

Peeples Poll: average after movie rating by month. Note: I limited the vertical axis between 77 and 85 to exaggerate the differences.

What month of the year has the best movies? I queried the RunPee app’s database for the Peeple’s Poll results and grouped them by month to find out. As you can see in the image above, the best month for movies is May… Sort of. The reason May has two bars associated with it is that the taller — gray — bar includes Averngers: Endgame, whereas the shorter — purple — bar excludes the results from that movie because it so single-handedly skews the results. When Endgame is excluded then the overall best month for movies is December.

Note: Avengers: Endgame has by far the highest rating and the most votes of any movie in the Peeple’s Poll database.

Does Expectation matter?

The RunPee app has a built-in Timer that will vibrate your phone 30 seconds before each “Peetime” in the movie. That means we can ask “peeple” what their expectation for a movie is before they see the movie and then when the movie is over we ask for their after-movie rating.

The graph above shows expectation and after-movie rating. I think it’s fairly remarkable that the two track each other so closely. Data excludes Avengers: Endgame

I would argue that a movie that far exceeds expectations might be more enjoyable than another movie that has a better after-movie rating, but only barely beats expectations. Ask yourself, what…