Achir Kalra
Achir Kalra is the founder and executive editor of USA Times, where he directs the Data Desk — the team behind the Star Index, a twenty-year database measurin…
About Achir Kalra
Achir Kalra is the founder and executive editor of USA Times, where he directs the Data Desk — the team behind the Star Index, a twenty-year database measuring how completely individual films come to dominate the American box office. He writes about cinema, the economics of moviegoing, large-format exhibition, and the data behind all three, and edits the publication's data-first reporting on technology, business, and public policy. Every figure USA Times publishes is traceable to a primary source; when the Data Desk gets something wrong, it corrects it in the open.
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Latest from this author
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Do Franchises Fade? The Data Says the Sequel Dominates Most
The received wisdom is diminishing returns. The domination data disagrees: the 2nd film peaks highest, and deep franchises stay strong – a sequel surge, and a survivorship trick.
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The Genre of Domination: Why Superhero and Sci-Fi Own the Box Office
Superhero and sci-fi films reach total domination 4x more often than any other genre. Animation wins on volume, horror wins cheaply, and fantasy never conquered at all.
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What 2026 Is Telling Us: The Year in Domination, and Where the Box Office Goes Next
2026 has already crowned 5 Phenomenons and handed the index its strangest anomaly in 20 years. The year so far, and what the golden ratio has taught us about where the box office is headed.
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Studio Wars: How Disney Annexed the Modern Box Office
Re-sort 20 years of box-office domination by studio and one name laps the field: Disney, with 28 Phenomenons and 164 weeks owned – about half the era’s total-domination events.
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The Golden-Ratio Hall of Fame: The 20 Most Dominant Films of the Last Twenty Years
The capstone ranking: the 20 films that owned a U.S. box-office week more completely than any others, led by Avengers: Endgame’s 88%. A monument to the winner-take-all era.
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A Moviegoer’s Map of New York’s Great Screens — and How to Get to Them
New York is one of the last cities on earth where the where of seeing a film is a genuine decision. On any given night you can catch a new release in the largest IMAX in the Northeast, a restored 1970s print in a West Village basement, a foreign premiere on the Lower East Side,…
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Why the Middle Film Wins: The Golden Section of the Perfect Trilogy
Empire, The Dark Knight, Aliens, Toy Story 2 – why is the second film so often the best? The darkest hour of a saga lands in its middle chapter, the trilogy’s golden section.
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The Summer Kickoff: Who Owns the First Weekend of May
The summer movie season has a starting gun: the first weekend of May. For 20 years, Marvel has owned it – from Iron Man to the Avengers. The launch slot that defines the season.
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Films Worth Leaving the House For: The New Rules of the Big Screen
The question is no longer whether to see a movie. It is where. For the first time in a century of cinema, nearly every film is available two ways — in a theater now, or on a couch soon — and the choice between them has quietly become the most important decision a moviegoer makes.…
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The Most Dominant Year the Box Office Ever Had (It’s More Recent Than You Think)
By the measure of sheer domination, the peak year isn’t 1977 or 1999 – it’s 2022, when six separate films each seized 62% of a week. Why the record is so recent.