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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Box office sales/participation is a pretty well understood system at this point. Outside the occasional outlier (The Greatest Showman was a good example), you can generally plot a movie’s performance for its entire run based on its opening weekend.
That projection is plotted against the movie’s production and marketing cost. The assumption for the industry average is that marketing = production cost. For example, if the movie cost $200 million to produce, the studio will spend ~$200 on marketing. Following this example, that movie would need have $400 million dollars in ticket sales to /break even/. Any movie that fails to break even in the box office or barely breaks even is considered a flop.
I don’t know where this conversation about woke movies is coming from. Movie box office performance is math. If a movie doesn’t sell tickets, audiences aren’t interested in it. That doesn’t mean a movie has no value. Movies can be big commercial failures and still win critical praise.
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