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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I feel like people are missing out on one of the biggest factors here:
The desire to be first to print.
Publications want to be the first to declare something a win or a loss or to just throw out literally any declaration about a movie at all (but being right more often let’s you carry more weight later on).
So everyone gets into pre-sale numbers, marketing campaigns, early viewing reactions, etc. just so they can make an educated guess on whether a movie will be a hit or not.
And because it’s self feeding they are also usually correct.
They movies they say are going to hit big get more coverage, more eyeballs see the ads and articles, and more people want to see the movie “everyone else is seeing because everyone is saying it’s going to be a hit”.
This is further compounded by the fact that movies are more expensive than ever and people have to really choose what they want to see. So we get mega hits and mega flops. It’s harder for mid tier movies to have long tails because if they aren’t making money they get axed off of screens to make room for whatever mega hit needs the show times.
There is an interview with Matt Damon that goes around every once in a while about why movies like Good Will Hunting don’t get made anymore and the answer he gave was streaming. There are no DVD sales. And DVD sales used to absolutely be factored into a movies success. So much so that studios were fine losing on ticket sales for a small low budget film knowing they could double their profits selling DVDs to all the people who bought a ticket to see Kevin Smiths latest weird film.
Why are we so quickly declaring movies hits and flops and failures? Because media is hyper capitalized more than ever before and everyone in the pipeline; studios, theaters, old and new media, and customers, are all squeezed to their last cents and have to obsess over every penny.
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