This has been the story of the year imo, but it dates back even further than that with Fantastic Beasts and Dr Strange. After years and years of trending the other way (especially when they bumped the "midnight" shows to 7pm), suddenly everything is getting good weekend multipliers and atleast decent legs after. Horror, chick flicks, X-Men, all the notoriously frontloaded genres are killing it. Even Fifty Shades Darker had respectable drops.

So what up with that? Is it the quality of the movies themselves or just something we need to get used to?

Americans are becoming Japanese.

I think this is just temporary and has a lot to do with 19+ weeks of fresh movies at #1. After a while this will dry down (FF8) and before long summer will come. I think summer won't be as huge this time.

Are reviews becoming more important for moviegoers?

I think they are give the current trend with RT. Ofcourse only domestically.

Kess mone totally euqka people being more picky gurl and it helps legs for good reviewed films.

This...

There has been an onslaught of TV spots that specifically mention Rotten Tomatoes. If people didn't care, they're being forced to.

Good reception+good scheduling

Good reception+good scheduling

True. I've seen it pop up in Skull Island spots.

Yeah, the first one had a couple drops under 50%, this one didn't.

FB didn't have the anticipation of a regular HP release. Strange held well, but close to expectations. It's mostly movies that have been released lately.

BTW, if reviews are far better than WOM, reviews won't matter much.

Because! people e gettun lazier every year and no longer rush to see their bling sink ASAP so legs appear longer as a result ya know.

This isn't just a temporary thing - if you look at the measure of 2nd weekend gross change, frontloading has been more or less arrested for the last decade, whereas before that, there was a distinct downward trend.

Other than higher quality movies, another reason is that people have probably exercised increased caution on what they rush out to see, for economic reasons - waiting for reviews and WOM to kick in a bit.

2016 begs to differ. The general legs last year were just atrocious. 2015 wasn't very different either. Regardless of big or small films the legs this year are much much better than past two years. Add to that there are quite a few surprises this year in terms of opening and mid-tier films are becoming huge because of that.

There is a trend of go big or go home this year still but the big aren't always HUGE like $300m+ but more contained to $100m-$200m.

Which nulls and voids the "go big or go home" argument.

Not when the rest of the movies are still flopping hard. There aren't enough $50m movies with smaller budgets still but this year is much better than last two years

People say no one cares about RT but the Sad Afflick was a popular meme.