Bo McCready has release a fascinating infographic illustrating the relative popularity of film genres since 1910.

Visit the page and click on the ‘Click to Standardize Axis Range’ button to be truly able to compare genres with each other.

Hover over each graph to reveal the top five IMDB voted or rated movies for each year in each genre.

Some observations:

• Two in five movies are either comedies or documentaries.
• Four in ten movies are either thrillers, horror, action or romance.
• The remaining two in ten movies are either crime, sci fi, fantasy, war, musicals or westerns.
• Genres declining in popularity over the last two decades: romance and crime.
• Genres increasing in popularity over the last two decades: documentary and horror.

My take: I love charts because they graphically add meaning to data. See The Numbers for a different take on film genres. The American Film Market has analyzed genre popularity around the world too.