Bye Bye Box Office Mojo

Sadly, I didn't see this one coming. The Box Office Mojo website has been the default source of online box office statistics for as long as I can remember, offering up-to-date information on ticket sales, screen counts, and more. Amazon bought it through IMDb back in 2008, but has largely left it alone. When IMDb's redesign happened a few years ago, there were some indications that the two sites would be combined, but this didn't end up happening. And then, at the end of October, a massive redesign of Box Office Mojo finally went through, breaking the functionality of much of the site, and sticking access to certain data behind paywalls - specifically an IMDbPro subscription. Box Office Mojo is now "Box Office Mojo by IMDbPro." You can't even look up budgets or inflation-adjusted figures without a paid account anymore. This has kicked up a ruckus, because everyone used Box Office Mojo, including most of the entertainment industry, journalists, and fans.

There's been plenty of griping from all corners of the entertainment world, but it's doubtful that Amazon is going to budge. They declared that the changes were "made in response to customer feedback and usage patterns, which will continue to inform future feature launches.” The customers in question are clearly IMDbPro users, as Amazon is now treating Box Office Mojo as an extension of their IMDb services, which have grown to include networking tools and streaming content over the past few years, while jettisoning popular features like the message board system and user reviews. I guess we should have realized this was going to happen back in 2014, when Box Office Mojo was taken offline briefly, and visitors redirected to IMDb. No explanation was offered at the time, and none have been offered since, so it's clearly not worth it trying to engage with whoever is making these decisions.

It's been a strange and disheartening, watching Amazon gradually monetize these bare bones, statistics-centered resource sites. Not content with simply sticking ads on the pages, they keep mucking around with the basic elements that made them appealing in the first place - their ease of use, their accessibility, and their strong, simple presentation of data. Thankfully, though IMDb is now obnoxiously graphics heavy, the site's basic functionality is mostly still intact. I can look up bits of data like release dates and production credits without too much hassle. Box Office Mojo, however, may be permanently, irreparably broken. It wasn't just one or two things that were removed, like the message boards. The vast majority of the data that was at the core of the site has been walled off, and the navigation is truly impenetrable. Users have been reporting errors everywhere, and some of the old functions are gone for good, even for the IMDb Pro users. What remains free and easily accessible to the public can be found at a dozen other film sites around the internet.

As a result, Box Office Mojo's users have proved perfectly willing to abandon the site in search of alternatives. There has been a noticeable exodus to rival site The Numbers. Box Office Pro has its boosters. It was announced that there are efforts underway to build a non-profit replacement site for Box Office Mojo, though like all fan driven projects, this doesn't look like it'll amount to much. What's clear is that a major tool used by everyone connected to the business of movies is gone. It went, suddenly, and without warning, and there's no way of getting it back. And it now stands as yet another stark reminder of how quickly things change online, and with so little rhyme or reason. A site as useful and well-regarded as Box Office Mojo can disappear overnight at the whim of Amazon or Google or Facebook. And all we can do is ask, "what's next?"

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