I don’t remember exactly when this started, but every Monday morning on the news they announce how much money different movies made over the weekend. I used to take this all in without paying too much attention, until it dawned on me; I don’t care.
I don’t have any money invested in movie studios. It doesn’t make any difference to me whether they turn a profit or not. And I don’t have any faith in the taste of the movie-going public. I have some critics whose opinions I trust, and I’d rather see a good movie than a popular one.
I understand why the studios would want to help spread this information. It’s a chance to get a little extra publicity for their movies under the pretext of news. And I think they want me to feel the pressure to see the movies everyone else is seeing. (Funny how people only object to peer pressure when it’s for certain things.)
I also understand why news outlets cover this. There is no effort involved in gathering the data, and the story writes itself. They get to report it like a horse race, with “winners” and “losers” and underdogs that we can root for.
I know that there’s more to it. I could fish around and come up with some reason it might help me to know this. but really, does anybody care how much money a movie makes from one weekend to the next?
I do, yes. I play an online game called the Hollywood Stock Exchange. It’s a stock market simulation based on how much a movie makes in it’s opening weekend.
Full disclosure: I write for a boxoffice site, the one linked in my profile.
For most cases, no, you really shouldn’t care about box office statistics. Box office isn’t really about what is good, just what is popular or marketed well. What it does show is societal trends in entertainment; the kind of things that are popular and continue to be popular and the things that change in entertainment, eg. the recent upswing in the popularity of comic book movies etc. Opening weekend figures aren’t often as interesting as the weekends that follow – if a film holds up well that means that there may be something about it that’s worth checking out, just as a pop culture barometer kind of thing. Doesn’t mean the film has to be good, just that there’s something interesting about it. I’m much more fascinated as an industry watcher by My Big Fat Greek Wedding’s run last year than I am about, say, X2.
I saw someone once compare it to baseball statistics and that seems about right to me. You don’t have to know who’s hitting what to enjoy the game but it can add to your enjoyment if you want it to.
It mostly annoys me. You mean the movie that’s been hyped extensively for the past 8 months and has all sorts of tie-ins with fastfood restaurants and toys everywhere and featured on the cover every entertainment magazine in the nation opened number 1 at the box office?!?!? WOAH! That’s amazing!
That’s so I can roll my eyes and intone: “Look at the dreck the unwashed masses flocked to see over the weekend. Thank Og I have better taste than all those maroons.”