Ever wonder just how the movie theatre chain business works and how to project and compare your film earnings of your movie ? You can find it out on any Box Office Report and compare your film on a smaller scale (example below). By reviewing a Box Office Chart, you can tell what a movie made on average of every theatre in the country( although these figures vary, and are slightly overreported.) Take for instance, Spiderman 1. The below figures report over 400 million in gross sales. Spiderman 1 grossed almost 115 million on the weekend of May 3rd, 2002. Out of 3,615 theatres in the US – each theatre on weighted average did about 32,000 in sales each. (Of course some made more than others.) These earnings and figures each week are reported to the distributor and a percentage is given to the movie theatre for exhibiting it.
As I say in my posts, making a succesful run at having a distributor fund your film is reducing the risk for them. This is done in a film distribution memorandum. The primary focus in this distribution memorandum is COMPARING your film to others. So, you can compare a similar film(s) to yours in your genre..(2 or 3 to be safe) Compare the terms such as Gross Amounts, Amount of Theatres, Per Theatre and Date, you can safely say your film is compareable to these figures when the film gets distributed by the distributor.
So again, on a smaller scale, (You can go on a higher or lower scale) if movie A and movie B are similar to yours and have box office statistics of 6,000 dollars per theatre for one weekend and the distributor had the film(s) showing in 20 theatres, the film(s) comparable to yours made 120,000 dollars that weekend. You can say that your film has a likeness to theirs and that is how much your film will make opening weekend. You can compare smaller figures from the weeks on, You might want to include about 3 months full of statistics as well to show the distributor, this is how long you want the film in the theatres. The main idea of this is to show the distributor on how you want your movie opening to run to the finish.
Please use the chart below for any examples you might need or to answer any questions about this post on reviewing Box Office Information. If you have any further comments, please email me at moviedistributionfacts@gmail.com or reply to the post, i will get back to you right away.
| Date | Rank | Gross | Theaters | Per Theater | Total Gross | Days |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5/3/2002 | 1 | $114,844,116 | 3,615 | $31,769 | $114,844,116 | 3 |
| 5/10/2002 | 1 | $71,417,527 | 3,615 | $19,756 | $223,040,031 | 10 |
| 5/17/2002 | 2 | $45,036,912 | 3,615 | $12,458 | $285,573,668 | 17 |
| 5/24/2002 | 2 | $28,508,104 | 3,876 | $7,355 | $333,641,492 | 24 |
| 5/31/2002 | 3 | $14,317,411 | 3,646 | $3,927 | $353,823,544 | 31 |
| 6/7/2002 | 5 | $10,311,062 | 3,235 | $3,187 | $370,428,183 | 38 |
| 6/14/2002 | 7 | $7,515,984 | 2,702 | $2,782 | $382,537,669 | 45 |
| 6/21/2002 | 10 | $4,555,932 | 2,278 | $2,000 | $390,382,313 | 52 |
| 6/28/2002 | 11 | $3,130,214 | 1,810 | $1,729 | $395,874,471 | 59 |
| 7/5/2002 | 13 | $2,204,636 | 1,502 | $1,468 | $400,058,357 | 66 |
| 7/12/2002 | 18 | $890,372 | 574 | $1,551 | $401,991,818 | 73 |
| 7/19/2002 | 22 | $403,186 | 265 | $1,521 | $402,770,278 | 80 |
| 7/26/2002 | 25 | $251,065 | 177 | $1,418 | $403,142,910 | 87 |
| 8/2/2002 | 25 | $234,714 | 228 | $1,029 | $403,505,336 | 94 |
| 8/9/2002 | 40 | $84,383 | 85 | $993 | $403,620,726 | 101 |
| 8/16/2002 | 44 | $67,390 | 74 | $911 | $403,706,375 | 108 |
