Box Office numbers. Accurate? (1 Viewer)

[Scott McGillivray]

Hi Gang!

We all know that one of the best indicators of a movies success is what it did in the box office. There are instances where a movie does so-so during its main release and then scores big on video, but for the most part, when we want to talk about how well a movie did, we check the box office numbers.

However, I wonder if in some instances, these numbers may not be trustworthy. What brought this to my attention was a discussion I had with Casper Van Dien of "Starship Troopers" (ST) fame. He mentioned that "Sleepy Hollow" had done much better than "Starship Troopers" in the box office, but that the numbers were not totally accurate. He indicated that since ST was an R-rated film, a large number of youngsters would buy tickets to G-rated films and simply go into see ST. In fact, Casper had said that a study had been performed for his film to see what percent of under-age kids could buy tickets to a G-movie and go see ST. The results were that 100% of them made it into the R-rated movie.

Casper also pointed out that at the same time ST was released, Disney re-released "The Little Mermaid". The idea was that Disney knew ST was an R-rated film and that kids needed a G-rated movie to buy tickets for. This would then boost the box office for "The Little Mermaid".

Anyway, this was all very eye-opening for me. I suspect that there are many learned folks here that know about this practice, but I thought I would pass this on and see if others had comments or additional info on this practice.

 

[Matt Stone]

This is a continually discussed topic in the Box Office thread, but basically it's the nature of the beast. It came up most recently with The Matrix Reloaded, which is now the most successful R-Rated film. IIRC, there was talk of X2 getting some of TMR's "youngster money" as a result of sneak-in's during the opening weekend. There are always going to be people that buy tickets to one show and sneak into another, and it always inflates the G, PG, PG-13 movies...but I don't believe the spill-over money is enough to make a significant difference in a films overall box office take.

 

[Seth--L]

I don't understand why people obsess over gross. What films net is the way of judging success.

 

[Holadem]

Gross is the way of judging attendance. I don't see what's so hard to get.

--
H

 

[Seth--L]

If you're interested in attendance, just look at the number of tickets sold.

Gross is obviously not very accurate way of judging attendence since the price of tickets varies based on theater, day, time, and year.

 

[Matt Stone]

If you're interested in attendance, just look at the number of tickets sold.

I can (and probably will) be wrong, but I don't think the American BO releases the number of tickets sold.

 

[Malcolm R]

So what's his point? "Sleepy Hollow" is also R-rated and it doubled ST's gross.

 

[Scott McGillivray]

Malcom - I think the difference would be that ST was clearly geared to young males whereas "Sleepy Hollow" was perhaps aimed at a slightly older crowd. At least thats how I would see the difference. Heck, I enjoyed them both!

 

[Luc D]

It's really strange that more people haven't called into question how ridiculous it is to gage the success of a film based on box office numbers. The real measure of a film's success should be based on ticket sales. After all, kids get into films usually half price, same with seniors, and what about afternoon shows? It's idiotic, but then people like to be impressed by big numbers. After all, a 60 million dollar opening sounds more impressive than 1 million tickets sold, right?

Then you have misleading statements like "Spider-Man is the third highest grossing film of all time". Sure, but if you take rising ticket sales and inflation into account it might not even make it into the top twenty in terms of actual popularity.

Besides, wouldn't it be easier to keep track of the number of tickets sales rather than the fluctuating ticket costs?

I apologize if this is a bit off topic, but it just seems to me that the reason why it's all so unreliable is because it's needlessly complicated.

 

[Matt Stone]

Paging Seth Paxton to thread number 160803...

It's really strange that more people haven't called into question how ridiculous it is to gage the success of a film based on box office numbers.

Actually, there was a multi-page discussion on this very topic over the summer in the box office thread. I'd like to see attendance numbers, but gross accurately reflects how much society (during a given time period) is willing to pay to see a film. For instance, if free screenings were allowed for Movie X, attendance would go through the roof, but ticket sales would remain zero. In general, people would have decided to see Movie X based upon the lack of a ticket price. On the other hand, if Movie Y was released with a ticket price of $10, and the same amount of people attended, Movie Y would be more successful than Movie X due to the fact that people were willing to pay more to see it. If you only looked at the attendance numbers, the films would appear to be equally successful.

I still think that attendance numbers should be tallied, but the gross numbers provide the demand for the film in a social context.

 

[Brian Lawrence]

After all, a 60 million dollar opening sounds more impressive than 1 million tickets sold, right?

That would be $60 per movie ticket

Just bustin ya, I think the reason Hollywood likes using dollar amounts, is that they can hide the fact that less people are going to see their big "blockbusters" than in the past. Studios love being able to lay claim to new box-office records being broken. Matrix Reloaded is now touted by Warner as the alltime biggest box-office take for an R rated movie. realistically, it was not as big of a hit as Beverly Hills Cop, The Godfather, or The Exorcist, and going by ticket counts rather than dollar figures would reveal this.

The movie industry is understandably not going to concern themselves with the consistency of their records, this is not like baseball stats where past numbers actually mean something. Naturally the industry wants to present their new films as monumental events, and being able to break opening weekend records on a yearly basis (because of rising ticket prices) helps create that image.

 

[Robert Floto]

Then you have misleading statements like "Spider-Man is the third highest grossing film of all time". Sure, but if you take rising ticket sales and inflation into account it might not even make it into the top twenty in terms of actual popularity.

You are correct! The number they actually list for Spider-Man is number 8. ...But adjusted for inflation it's actually comes out to number 35!

That's quite a difference!

It's interesting to note that the list of films that are considered the top grossers of all time (1. Titanic, 2. Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone, 3. The Phantom Menace, 4. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 5. Jurassic Park, 6. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 7. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, 8. Spider-Man, 9. Independence Day, and 10. Star Wars) isn't anywhere near the same as the actual top ten adjusted for inflation (1. Gone With the Wind, 2. Star Wars, 3. The Sound of Music, 4. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, 5. The Ten Commandments, 6. Titanic, 7. Jaws, 8. Doctor Zhivago 9. The Exorcist, and 10. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) ...but that list definitely makes more sense to me...

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted/

 

[Holadem]

If you're interested in attendance, just look at the number of tickets sold.

Gross is obviously not very accurate way of judging attendence since the price of tickets varies based on theater, day, time, and year.

Perhaps but I suspect such differences do not present enough of an offest to invalidate the results.

Theater, day and time factors apply pretty much equally to all movies.

For year, the adjusted (for inflation) BO data is available.

At the end of the day, gross does reflect attendance.

--
H

 

[MartinTeller]

Unfortunately, even inflation-adjusted numbers don't take home video into account. 4 of the top 5 all-time box office (adjusted for inflation) were released at a time when saying "I'll wait for it to come out on video" wasn't an option.

Ultimately, any measurement of revenue can only serve to tell you how much money a movie made, not how many eyes have gazed upon it.

 

[Malcolm R]

And that bottom line is basically all the studios are interested in, namely how much $$$ did a particular title generate. I'd think they're considerably less interested in the specific number of tickets or how it compares to some other film released 20 years ago.

Box office historians may be interested. Day-to-day beancounters at the studios are probably not.