WAMEGO — The Wizard of Oz was recently named the most influential movie of all time according to an article by the Telegraph news.
It beat out Star Wars, Psycho, and 47,000 other films. The article cited work from researchers at the University of Turin who developed a computer program that measures the success of a film by how many times it is referenced in other films and how many spin-offs were created from it instead of by box office sales or reviews.
Gift shop manager of the Oz Museum in Wamego, Katlyn Stubbeman, commented on the recognition.
Stubbeman said one of the reasons The Wizard of Oz is so popular is because it’s a movie for every generation.
Some movies that were right behind The Wizard of Oz in influence were Star Wars, Psycho, King Kong, and Frankenstein. Stubbeman addressed the genre of movies is another reason The Wizard of Oz came out on top.
The researchers who developed the algorithm for the most influential movie based the study on “the key intuition that a successful movie will be probably known and referenced by some of the successive ones, for honoring it or for trying to reproduce its outstanding performance,” according to the Telegraph.
They said the Wizard of Oz has been referenced approximately 3,000 times in other films and television programs.
