Hey teem-sters (ha ha),
My question is this – how are box office draws collected? How do we know that %FILM made $16 mil on its opening weekend, and how much of that goes back to the director/studio and how much is kept by the grubby theatres?
Thanks,
Marc
Theatres rent the movies they show from the distributors. The rental agreement is that they will pay so much money per seat sold (as opposed to your video rental where you pay by the day and can then show it to the 137 people in your extended family, if you choose).
Part of the agreemment includes the stipulation that the theatres will report back to the distributors what their sales were each night or week. The distributors then collate the numbers from all the theaters that have rented their films and publish the numbers.
As to your grubby theater (and the very nice centillion-plex in my neighborhood), they don’t make very much money off the films at all in the first several weeks. The contracts are written so that nearly all the gate is handed right back to the distributor for the first x weeks, after which the theater can get larger and larger percentages of the money paid for tickets.
The big cash crop at for the theater is the .07 of popcorn that they coat with .12 of butter and sell for $2.50.
I’ve read where in some cases, the theaters have to pay MORE than the ticket price to the studio per ticket sold.
The X weeks usually corresponds to the No Pass designation you see for new releases. The theater won’t let you use a free pass on a new release because they lose real money by letting you in because they still have to pay.
…so why the hike in ticket prices? Am I to gather, then, that that was the choice of the distribution companies and not the owners of the mega-super-duper-gargantuaplex?