I am not a film maker in any way. So then why do so many news sites tell me about how much money the film has taken in during its first weekend, week, etc…?
As a film fan / viewer, why should I care?
Any sort of historical explanation would be very appreciated.
Keep in mind that there’s such a thing as “Hollywood Accounting”. Studios will claim big box office, and then turn around and tell the IRS and stakeholders that their pictures never made money.
It’s just a metric for success and popularity.
Doesn’t it really just mean the marketing was good?
I think it’s even worse: If I’m curios and buy a ticket yet absolutely hate the film after seeing it, i still paid a ticket. So Ticket sales are absolutely unrelated to the quality of the movie.
I also just started to realize how out of touch most critics are with regular viewers (or me at least). Some films on IMDB have horrible critics reviews yet the user reviews are almost always higher or even quite decent.
Once upon a time, the theatre was the only place to watch a film.
So, the box office takings were the only income and sole measure of the success of a film.
That metric has hung around, but the modes of film consumption have expanded.
I want to add that the box office income is simply one of the only objective metrics to compare the success of films.
Because people think mo money = mo good… its core ideology of capitalism.
If these movies did not make money, they would not get made. Maybe other types of movies would get made, and maybe they’d be better, but the big budget movies that do get made are to make money.
And that is not a valid reason to make art. That’s not how we should determine success.
Because the film industry is interested in it. It is the first and most public bit of information on what movies are popular and trending.
Yes, sure and I know other forms of entertainment do this too - books, music and so on. I guess I was just saying it annoys me.
If they instead said they sold x tickets (like someone else here suggested), or the movie has some positive reviews, that’s useful for me. But the $$$ is not information I can do anything with, beyond just, “OK, lots of other people checked it out”.
Great example: This movie - Season of the Witch (2011) - had good box office numbers but was largely panned.
If I were running a media site covering movies, I would only report the reviews not the sales numbers. That seems to me to be the only honest way to handle this, but I’m just one guy. If you all don’t mind this, then cool.
How is ticket sales any different than box office numbers? It will be a measure of profitability.
Also, the average rating is also going to be a pseudo measure of a different kind of popularity. Even then, a list of well reviewed movies may not have that much meaning overall for the readership above Rotten Tomatoes.
And outside of reviews, movie news is really geared towards people who are interested in the trade or people interested in how current trends will affect future output. A lot of future output is going to be affected by sales.
I think it’s simply because people want to feel like they’re in “the biz” So rather than talking about how good something is, they talk about how much money it makes, how many people did something, what’s the revenue. It also is a bit hard to quantify “A good movie” but it’s SIMPLE to quantify a “popular” or “revenue generating” movie (At least in terms of revenue). So rather than discussing the movie itself we now discuss “how popular it is”. Kind of sucks in my opinion because all it means is “Other people like it”. It’s like the social media of news stories. Then again you don’t want to like something that isn’t popular, do you?
But I mean it probably comes down to "Variety did it so it was the news of the industry, and then others did it and didn’t notice a change in readership (or saw a positive change) and so they did it more.
I think it’s more the people in the industry that use it as a metric.
How many people do you know that know what random movies generate at the box office? Most people tend to describe it as “I liked it” or “I didn’t like it”.
It’s like other forms of art- most people don’t know what a Monet goes for at auction, they only know if they like Monet’s pieces (if they even know that much.)
Kind of sucks in my opinion because all it means is “Other people like it”.
It doesn’t even mean that, it just meant that they anticipated liking it and payed movie theater money to watch it. It could, by another metric, be seen as a flop or bad movie. Especially when it comes to opening weekend revenue because all that means is their advertising worked and got butts in seats for the first 3 days it was out.
Excellent point that’s absolutely true. It means “Marketing worked” (at least early on)
I hate it because income feels like a number that the studios really care about, but what about number of tickets sold? A movie released this year has a huge head start on box office income when compared to a movie from 20 years ago, since ticket prices have easily doubled. Plus, theatres often have different prices for students, children, seniors, matinees, and even IMAX/3D. So wouldn’t it be more apples to apples over time to compare number of tickets sold, rather than total income?
Don’t let it bother you. It’s just meaningless marketing & publicity.
I try not to read too much into it. The box office income is obviously important in terms of what sort of films may get produced in the future. If a movie flops, it will be unlikely to get a sequel, but more broadly, the whole industry may pivot towards one genre or another depending on recent successes.
But I often wonder about entertainment columnists who write things like “They really liked this film over in China but not in North America.” How good an indicator are box office sales of how much people really enjoyed a film? The reason I ask is based on my own viewing habits. When I feel like going to a movie, I look at what’s showing and think ok, that looks pretty interesting. I might read a review or watch a trailer, but at the end of the day, I’m taking a risk that I will like it. I may or I may not. And either way, it is unlikely that I would see it again at the theatre.
So I guess what I’m saying is that for me, at least, a ticket purchase is not an automatic vote of confidence that I think this film is great. But maybe I’m not a typical moviegoer, introvert that I am? Maybe the normal pattern is you see it with a couple friends, and if you like it, you gather more friends and see it again and again? If that’s more the way it goes, I can understand why box office sales would truly correlate to a film’s worthiness. But if more people are like me, it could just be that the movie was really hyped up and people decided to go see it even if they come out of there going wow, that sucked. But they still paid for the ticket regardless, which reflects well on box office sales.
Dick-measuring contest. They use those numbers as a metric of success but it’s not. For example “Shawshank Redemption” bombed box office, so did “The Thing” and number of other cult movies. They bombed box office but later became cult movies that are still earning money.
Fun exercise… Look at the opening weekend box office numbers and figure out what 90% of it is. That is what the distributor made from the movie for THAT WEEKEND. They will continue to make 90% for at least a week. After that it will drop some. Eventually the theater will actually get the lion’s share of the box office, something like 6-8 weeks after the movie comes out. Do your local theaters a favor, don’t go see movies opening weekend, call the box office each week to find out what movies will be leaving that week and go see it then. Or, if you absolutely feel the need to go see it opening weekend, budget for the largest popcorn and drink you can afford. They are the highest profit margin items on the menu. The tickets may cost 30-45 bucks for a date night, but the theater only sees $3-$4.5 of that at the top end, even less for more anticipated movies. That is why concessions are so expensive, it is literally the only way they can stay afloat and Disney has even tried demanding 50% of opening weekend concessions for some movies.
This is why so many cinemas are failing, both chains and locals. Spread the word, share this info, save our silver screens and send a message to the big media companies that they are being too greedy.
Money is all that matters. Is a movie good? Well, let’s look a the box office. Same in all facets of life. It’s pretty gross and bugged me for years and years. I have spent so long developing a habit of ignoring those types of numbers in news. It’s almost automatic at this point. Just in one ear and out the other.
That and doesn’t Disney still own ABC? I remember ABC used to always cover Disney movies like it was newsworthy. Conspiracy hat on, all these companies are in bed together and their number one goal is to take your money. And mine. Americans love a front-runner. I was raised to believe we rooted for the underdog, but that’s bullshit. If the news can hype a movie, people will think Other people are spending money on it. I better as well. If nothing else, then just for social situation bullshit. So the numbers go up. The movie studio loves it. They make more money, spend more on ads. The TV studios love it, they make more money. People love it, they’re all part of a club now, if only marginally poorer. And now it’s just a race to the bottom. Highest $$ wins. Less Kubrick, more Bay.
tl;dr You shouldn’t give a shit. I don’t.
