Did you know that studios aren’t required to reveal box office grosses? Yes, they have to let shareholders know, but there aren’t obligated to tell the general public about the box office numbers for individual film titles. Announcing how much a film is making as it goes is really just a tactic to get more people to fill seats – if they feel a movie is a financial success. This has worked for decades – until COVID-19 hit. Now, the way box office reporting has always happened may change moving forward.
Sony Pictures Chief Tom Rothman expressed:
“Somebody realized that nothing sells like success. And, in that moment, the first stone was cast. It turns out people were as interested in that as in the No. 1 TV show. Sure enough it worked.” Rothman believes the rise of box office reporting fundamentally changed the landscape — and not necessarily for the better — as marketing budgets skyrocketed and theatrical shelf lives shortened. “It was the beginning of narrowing what kind of big movies were made for theaters,” he says. “A movie had to be a simple enough idea to open wide.”
Keep in mind that announcing box office grosses had only become a fascination throughout the 80s and 90s. The idea to judge a film on its awards and critical acclaim [rather than financial success]was the reason Rothman started Fox Searchlight in 1994:
“Before that, it wasn’t a parachute business. Now it is. You open or you die. There wasn’t an instant pronouncement of judgment,” adds Rothman. “And so the same way it is about sports . There’s a winner and there’s a loser — it became that way about films. It wasn’t a question of whether a movie was good or bad — which is fair enough — it became a question of whether the movie had opened or not opened, which is much less fair.”
Warner Bros. had put out Tenet amidst a time when other studios are pushing back their release dates. Rather than reveal box office grosses along the way, the studio deviated from the norm and only put out the weekend numbers on Sundays. It also blocked rivals from seeing what Tenet made on Comscore – to keep it all to themselves. Comscore is the database that all theater ticket sales are fed into.
One rival studio exec spoke on Warner Bros. decision:
“I actually was very, very sympathetic to Warner Bros. and agreed it was a mistake to encourage opening-weekend pronouncements.”
Sony is also changing it up, but not as much as Warner Bros. It’s only delaying the release of the daily Comscore numbers until the Monday after its opening weekend. After that, it will adhere to the traditional reporting.
Paul Dergarabedian, Scomscore’s Chief Box Office Analyst, spoke:
“We have come through the looking glass and things have become forever changed in terms of how we perceive, interpret and report on the numbers,” says Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s chief box office analyst. “We are living in a parallel universe. Suddenly, a $3 million opening has become something to celebrate” — as opposed to being a case for the usual studio schadenfreude.”
With movies needing to be delayed and not everyone going to the movie theaters, this sort of reporting may be for the best. In the past, we’ve judged blockbusters almost solely by its numbers. If something doesn’t hit one billion dollars – is it even a good film? Tenet may not have made as much as it was hoping due to people being trepidatious to go to the theaters. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. Maybe it is time we start judging films on the quality of the movie itself. Not how much money it makes. What do you think?
Source: THR
Make sure to check out our podcasts each week including Geek Vibes Live, Top 10 with Tia, Wrestling Geeks Alliance and more!
A girl with too many fandoms to count.
