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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Because the vast majority of movies follow the exact same pattern of earnings over time and a lot of movies these days are very formulaic so you can easily judge them against the performance of the dozen similar films that came before them. I mean if Iron Man 7 has a weak opening and a big drop off, it’s done. The market knows how audiences react to iron man sequels and superhero movies and MCU films so they have built in expectations.
Statistics and historical precedent.
Something like 95% of movies will make between 2-3x their opening weekend. (Assuming wide release)
So take opening weekend, multiple by 3 and you have a good idea where it might end up in best case.
Movie ticket sales follow very predictable trends.
They’re typically most popular on the opening weekend, and popularity quickly falls off over a period of days to weeks.
The vast majority of the money is made in the first week or two, for the vast majority of films.
This makes it easy to get fairly accurate predictions of what a film will gross in total, based on just the first week or two of sales.
And this prediction is what is used to determine if a film is a flop or not, while it’s still showing in theatres.
>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?
Not really.
>If not, why?
Because if you know how many people watched the movie in the first two weekends of theaters, it’s pretty easy to predict how the rest of the ticket sales will go.
Situation 1. Lots of people go opening weekend. That’s a good indicator that people are interested in the movie.
Situation 2. Lots of people go the second weekend. That’s a good indicator that people liked the movie and told their friends to go.
What can you learn from weekends 3-20 that you can’t learn in the first two?
we have year and year of statistical data to show that movies have their biggest box office on opening weekend
so unless the movie is pulling a Titanic and suddenly getting a week 2 bump followed by super long legs (a term for the movie not dropping in box office week to week), you can basically get a good idea of how it’s going to do
also, no one invests 100s of millions of dollars to eventually break even on human media
>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.
…. “Why do they say a lot of people drive in NYC? I don’t, and none of my friends do. There’s too much traffic.”
The fact that theatres are packed at first, and calm down later is expressly because you’re in the minority.
>Doesn’t the entire run – including theater receipts, pay per view, home media sales, etc.
Not really. That first week in theatres accounts for over 75% of gross revenue for most movies. After that, everything tends to tapper off.
If you spent 4 million to make the thing and you only made 2 million after the first week, you’re not breaking even, let alone making a substantial profit. Ironically, this ain’t the movies; you’re not that lucky.
The fact of the matter is that movie tickets are $10. If you didn’t watch it in theatres, it’s likely either you don’t care enough to buy a DVD, or you’re gonna lose interest before you get the chance to.
There are a few exceptions to this but, generally speaking, Something like 50% of a movie’s total box office is made on opening weekend. It’s not that hard to guess out a movies total box once you know what it made opening weekend.
Because most films make %75 of their gross revenue the first week.
While some movies make more money later because of word of mouth. They tend to be smaller budget films not your big budget Hollywood films. If a film doesn’t do well the first week, it rarely makes up the difference later.
The initial demand of the first month will be used to decide how long it stays in theaters, how it will be sold to pay-per-view., how it will be released internationally, when it will be released for sale.
Diminishing returns. Lets take the recent Little Mermaid remake as an example. Here’s what it earned domestically each of the first 4 weeks:
1. $145 million
2. $60 million
3. $36 million
4. $20 million
Each week is substantially less lucrative than the previous. In this case more than half the earnings occurred in the first week. Based on this kind of data (along with data from lots of other movies over time, number of theaters released, review scores, etc.) you can build a pretty accurate estimate of how much the movie will eventually earn overall.
Its not an exact science. Sometimes movies that start small get a huge wave due to word of mouth. Sometimes a movie takes off in one of the larger overseas markets despite doing so/so domestically. But those are exceptions. Most of the time the data is good enough to make a call fairly early on.
It also depends on how much the movie cost to make. If it was a very cheap movie, even modest returns can turn it profitable. On the other hand if it was very expensive, it can be quick to see it won’t make much, if any, profit, even over time.
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