Keeping apace of the figures needs to become second nature to anyone who wishes to earn a living through the filmmaking business, because here they also learn how to survive in the business, whether as an 'indie' producer or as a worker in the global mainstream industry.
Box office data use in film studies
Box office grosses must be looked at constantly, every filmmaker being aware of these figures for every film, because this is the measure of the response of people, the audience, to the film. Box office figures are a mainstream indicator, often taken out of context. They are ‘data-mined’ by analysts for various purposes. How can this process be understood?
In film studies, box office indicators can be used to trace the development of new trends in genre formation. Jill Nelmes uses historical box office data to sketch a history of film-going and suggest how trends are used in the film planning stage, and how these inform film and television marketing strategies. Warren Buckland used box office figures and production costs to understand how Spielberg developed the blockbuster movie: "A blockbuster can be defined in terms of two variables:" he says, "the huge sums involved in production and marketing, and the amount of revenue received."
Ten facets of box office data to apply in film studies
Buckland and Long's discussion of how box office can be used in contemporary film studies suggests ten data sets that can be extracted from breaking box office grosses to understand a current market trend. These same ten points also constitute important keys to historical analysis of movies and understanding their influence on further developments in the industry.
- Opening weekend is usually widely reported, but its significance depends on release strategies, with the tailored release able to benefit most from post-release adjustment.
- Full week figures are listed in industry magazines such as Variety and Hollywood Reporter.
- Number of screens: the number of cinemas/theatres where the film is being shown, including multiple screens showing same film, provide numbers that influence box office results.
- Week’s average dollars per engagement/theatre: divide box office takings by number of engagements to get an average amount of money taken at box office.
- Percentage change from first weekend to second weekend. 40% is the average drop in revenue, more than 60% implies disaster, perhaps because this is a measure of word-of-mouth audience feedback. It is rare for a film to increase its attendance between first and second weekends without extending numbers of screens it is being shown on. This change, but from Friday opening night to Saturday night takings, is increasingly scrutinized – that is why it can be big news.
- Number of weeks in the top ten is often influenced by whether saturation release or platform release strategies are employed. Films never survive more than six weeks.
- Cumulative receipts are an important factor; domestic, foreign and worldwide, because there are movies that have mediocre reception in the US, but are blockbusters overseas.
- Ratio between first and final box office: a historic device to measure durability, the staying power of a release.
- Time taken to break 100 million dollars, in days or weeks, is another useful historic data set.
- Ratio between box office and budget: this exerts strong influence as a good measure of success for potential investors in the next movie project involving the same creative collaborators.
Box office figures categorized in this manner can be used to identify trends in the contemporary industry. Top tens are the commonest result of this kind of data mining, but a more serious application would be to chart the success (or faltering) of studios over periods of time. It could also be used to measure how nominations for awards affect movie success and longevity; the value of individual stars could be assessed by using these methods.
Applying box office data to the study of a film
The ten points of box office data applied in film analysis are demonstrated by Buckland and Long in their market analysis of The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), the first of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The predictions for the project were pessimistic, emphasising the precarious business position of New Line Cinema and their lack of a global distribution system. This is weighed against how saturation screening benefitted the project, providing the largest gross for a December launch, reminding us that seasonality is an important factor in using figures for prediction and analysis.
An important aspect of film education is to learn, and to apply, methods of analysis. Aesthetic and cultural methods of analysis may be made sense of by understanding the relationship between cinema attendance and industry financial mechanisms such as box office figures.
Sources
Warren Buckland (2006) Directed by Steven Spielberg: poetics of the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster Continuum
Warren Buckland and Christopher Long (2006) ‘Following the Money: the Lord of the Rings and the Culture of Box Office Figures’ in Ernest Mathijs (ed) The Lord of the Rings: popular culture in global context Wallflower Press
Jill Nelmes (1996 revised 2003) An Introduction to Film Studies Routledge
Valerie Williamson - Dr. Val Williamson is a freelance journalist and academic specialising in historical and popular culture topics.
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