What? What does this mean?
Riddle me this: What movie has had more people see it in the theatre than any other movie to date?
Trick question. It's really too hard to tell. Most people will tell you it's Gone With The Wind. But MGM hasn't kept the best of records. And then all the re-releases in theatre and on video are lumped in... and most people say "and tickets only cost a nickel!" Well in 1939 the average US ticket was 23 cents. So the best infor we have is that opening weekend: 4.1million people saw GWTW. And it did have a very long run in the theatres.
But how about now?
I think studios should report number of tickets sold, not gross revenue.
Wouldn't it actually help the studio in marketing? If 15million people see a movie in 3 days, doesn't that mean more than 100million in gross revenue? It does.
It does because many theatres in the US still have cheap tickets (read: the heartland) and many theatres have matinee prices still.
If you take 100million and divide it by the average ticket price in the US ($7) you get 14million+ tickets. But that doesn't take into account lower cost tickets where people might actually get to see two movies in the stix for the price of one in NYC and matinees where again, lots of money can be discounted. Just for grins & giggles, assume 1million people aren't getting counted in this recording method. Their money is but their voice isn't.
Wouldn't 1 million people be able to convince you of something, even if it was as trivial as seeing a movie?
The box office numbers are advertising. The studios aren't worried about making money back. Between the foreign markets and the HUGE DVD sales in the US, they always make their money back. It's almost impossible not to. There's a Punisher sequel in the can and the Golden Compass sequel is about to be greenlighted (not lit). Did you see those doing huge numbers? No. Hell, the Punisher movie had a Special Edition DVD and then a Director's Cut DVD with a newly animated opening sequence added! They don't throw money at something that doesn't throw it back! And DVD throws back. But I digress.
The total amount of money the movie has made is supposed to attract you to see the movie. A sort of: "How could this many people be wrong?" Well wouldn’t that number be just as impressive if we knew exactly how many people that was?
Couldn’t it also help movies? Take, for instance, kids movies. How many kids are really at the 10PM show? Not many. But they are piled up in the early shows, many of which are discounted. Or at least the kids tickets are. The studios are selling themselves short on these! If a kids ticket is 25-30% off the adult ticket, they are shorting themselves in 25-30% of bandwagon advertising!
And the best part is... Total Ticket Sales never have to be adjusted for inflation! The ticket prices are just going to go up. Someday a crappy movie that barely anyone saw is going to surpass Titanic. But the tickets were $100 each. Matinee.
Oh holy crap don't even start me on these supposed "luxury movies" where it's going to be $30-$45 a ticket but you get a waiter and reserved seat. How is that going to play into revenue charts?
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