It seems like even before the first weekend is over, all the box office analysts have already declared the success or failure of the movie. I know personally, I don’t see a movie until the end of the run, so I don’t have to deal with huge crowds and lines and bad seats, it’s safe to say that nearly everyone I know follows suit. Doesn’t the entire run – including theater receipts, pay per view, home media sales, etc. – have to be considered for that hit or flop call is made? If not, why?
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Opening night/week surveys are really predictive of how well a film does.
Those audiences are the people most excited to see the movie. You don’t go opening night to a film you don’t care about. If that audience doesn’t like the film, either 1: it’s failed to find it’s target audience 2: it’s target audience is small and niche or 3: even it’s target audience doesn’t like it much. Of those the only one that might work out long term is the first option, and even then that’s possible future ‘beloved cult classic’ status. You may not see a movie till the end of its run, but at that point if everyone tells you it’s pretty mediocre, how likely are you to actually go see it instead of something else?
Cinemascores is a major source of that kinda of survey. Hit their site and check movies where you know how they performed or track the recent releases. They give letter grades F through A+. Anything under an A will have underperformed (still successful but not what the studio wanted) and B down will have flopped to some degree (Catwoman got a B). C under tends to be really bad flops. At the extreme end there are very few F grades, and they all ended up some of the most legendary flops of all time. Alone in The dark and The Turning are two examples there.
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