Have Movies Gotten Longer?

1. Describes and motivates a real-world problem where data science may provide helpful insights. Your description should be easily understood by a casual reader and include citations to motivating sources or relevant information (e.g. news articles, further reading links … Wikipedia makes for a poor reference but the links it cites are usually promising).

Proposal: Have movies gotten longer over time?

Many movie goers in the last few years have felt that movies have gotten longer. "Watching a movie in theaters these days can feel like a feat of endurance"(Kaur Why it feels like movies are getting longer). Is this really the case though? "It may not be scientifically proven, but sometimes it feels like movies are, indeed, getting longer"(Rubin Why are movies so long now?). Through data science I'm going to try and see if that is the case.

citations:

Kaur, Harmeet. “Why It Feels like Movies Are Getting Longer.” CNN, Cable News Network, 6 Feb. 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/06/entertainment/movie-runtimes-longer-mcu-batman-oscar-bait-cec/index.html. Rubin, Rebecca. “Why Are Movies so Long Now?” Variety, Variety, 23 Feb. 2022, https://variety.com/2022/film/features/batman-spider-man-long-movie-runtimes-1235187797/.

1. Explicitly load and show your dataset. Provide a data dictionary which explains the meaning of each feature present. Demonstrate that this data is sufficient to make progress on your real-world problem described above.

import pandas as pd

data = pd.read_csv("movies.csv")

data

	name	rating	genre	year	released	score	votes	director	writer	star	country	budget	gross	company	runtime
0	The Shining	R	Drama	1980	June 13, 1980 (United States)	8.4	927000.0	Stanley Kubrick	Stephen King	Jack Nicholson	United Kingdom	19000000.0	46998772.0	Warner Bros.	146.0
1	The Blue Lagoon	R	Adventure	1980	July 2, 1980 (United States)	5.8	65000.0	Randal Kleiser	Henry De Vere Stacpoole	Brooke Shields	United States	4500000.0	58853106.0	Columbia Pictures	104.0
2	Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back	PG	Action	1980	June 20, 1980 (United States)	8.7	1200000.0	Irvin Kershner	Leigh Brackett	Mark Hamill	United States	18000000.0	538375067.0	Lucasfilm	124.0
3	Airplane!	PG	Comedy	1980	July 2, 1980 (United States)	7.7	221000.0	Jim Abrahams	Jim Abrahams	Robert Hays	United States	3500000.0	83453539.0	Paramount Pictures	88.0
4	Caddyshack	R	Comedy	1980	July 25, 1980 (United States)	7.3	108000.0	Harold Ramis	Brian Doyle-Murray	Chevy Chase	United States	6000000.0	39846344.0	Orion Pictures	98.0
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
7663	More to Life	NaN	Drama	2020	October 23, 2020 (United States)	3.1	18.0	Joseph Ebanks	Joseph Ebanks	Shannon Bond	United States	7000.0	NaN	NaN	90.0
7664	Dream Round	NaN	Comedy	2020	February 7, 2020 (United States)	4.7	36.0	Dusty Dukatz	Lisa Huston	Michael Saquella	United States	NaN	NaN	Cactus Blue Entertainment	90.0
7665	Saving Mbango	NaN	Drama	2020	April 27, 2020 (Cameroon)	5.7	29.0	Nkanya Nkwai	Lynno Lovert	Onyama Laura	United States	58750.0	NaN	Embi Productions	NaN
7666	It's Just Us	NaN	Drama	2020	October 1, 2020 (United States)	NaN	NaN	James Randall	James Randall	Christina Roz	United States	15000.0	NaN	NaN	120.0
7667	Tee em el	NaN	Horror	2020	August 19, 2020 (United States)	5.7	7.0	Pereko Mosia	Pereko Mosia	Siyabonga Mabaso	South Africa	NaN	NaN	PK 65 Films	102.0

7668 rows × 15 columns

data dictionary

name: name of movie

rating: rating of movie

genre: genre of movie

year: year that movie was released

released: specific date movie was released

score: average IMBD score

votes: number of people who rated on IMBD

director: director of movie

writer: writer of movie

star: movie start of the movie

country: country of origin

budget: budget for the movie

gross: how much the movie grossed

compaany: company that produced the movie

runtime: runtime of the movie (how long the movie is)

This dataset has the year that each movie was released and its runtime so it is sufficient for solving whether or not movies have gotten longer over time.

1. Write one or two sentences about how the data will be used to solve the problem.

First count how may movies came out in each year, and add up the total runtime of movies that came out in each year. Then use these two values to find the average runtime of movies in every year from 1980 to 2020 (the years contained in the dataset I'm using). From there you can see how the average runtime of movies has changed (or not changed).