Question for anobody in the movie business: How are the gross figures

[mike1963]

calculated? Do individual theaters fax their ticket sales into some kind of central office that then relays them to some central processing office...something like that? I just wonder how they get those numbers like "Movie XYZ 'made' $10 million last week..."
:eyes:

[cease_fire]

1. Gross figures...

Represent total box office reciepts.

In order for a Theater to obtain presentation rights, and as part of the audit trail for distributors and above the line principals (those who are part of the film production company that get paid accroding to revenue generated by the film) the theater must submit box office tallies - electonically directly to the distributors accounting mechanism.

So, a film that'd done X million in sales is reported a X million in sales.

Hope that helps.

[papau]

2. F911 reported $8 million in sales for its first day -- n/t

n/t

[SheilaT]

6. I believe that figure is still

an estimate. I think sometime Monday we'll get the actual numbers. Given all the reports of totally sold-out theaters, and multi-plexes adding screens, that's got to be the before-hand estimate.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/ is a link to information on box office receipts.

[mike1963]

3. Okay, thanks, I was really mostly wondering about the mechanism of

how it got tallied. And if I didn't before, I want to thank you for your magnificent review the other night!
:toast:
:D

[AP]

4. I think there's a service that collects grosses on Monday.

The big distributors pay for the service so that they can get the estimates on Monday and adjust their advertising campaigns and make decisions about pulling movies before Wed. But they eventually settle up with the theaters based on their actual ticket reciepts. In other words, the monday moring numbers are close but aren't exactly what the film makes, and aren't what the distributors base their collectibles on. They're kind of like the exit polls, and there's a real count later.

[mike1963]

5. That's interesting...I'm wondering...if there might be any reason for a

theater to 'fudge factor' the numbers one way or the other to bring their bottom line up...(not that I believe it's done, just my normal curious and cynical curiosity) ;-)

[AP]

7. Not at all.

If the grosses service gets it wrong, they'll lose business. The distributors will get pissed that they're making important business decisions based on spotty information.

And obviously the exhibitors aren't going to overstate grosses when the ultimately have reconcile because it will increase the amount they owe the distributor.

If anything, the exhibitor would prefer to understate grosses and then keep more money, but there are enough protections for the distributor to prevent that, including a right to audit the books.

[papau]

8. F911 reported $21.8 million in sales for weekend - coming in first

!

:-)

[TexasSissy]

9. Yes, CNN reported this even. it was the #1 film for the weekend!

Yay!