I am kinda sick of seeing screaming headlines/alerts about movies that are opening to "HUGE" per-screen averages at the end of the year... all the more absurd as studio-level wide release marketing budgets are leading to these HUGE exclusive openings.
I get it... I get it. But it is a scam and journalists should be saying so.
This weekend it is a $64,000 per-screen average - estimated, of course - for Revolutionary Road. That's - get this - fewer than 350 tickets per screen than Frost/Nixon's HUGE opening. And what is all the box office maven buzz this week (coming, not surprisingly, from Rev Road HQ )? That Frost/Nixon is underperforming. (Not really fair... but another conversation.)
And then there are the pesky details... like I did the math and realized that Rev Road on 3 screens was mathematically incapable of grossing $64,000 per. Then I looked... it's in three theaters... on 5 screens.... which really makes it $36,400 per... estimated.
Oh.
The Top 10 per-screen launches this year until this weekend... and no, I have not yet checked for actual screen count for the others... I will as soon as I can.
Frost/Nixon - $180,708 - 3 - $60,236 - $2,659,000 - 12/5/08
The Wrestler - $202,714 - 4 - $50,679 - $648,000 - 12/17/08
Gran Torino - $271,720 - 6 - $45,287 - $2,619,000 - 12/12/08
Kit Kittredge: An American Girl - $220,297 - 5 - $44,059 - $17,657,973 - 6/20/08
Milk - $1,453,844 - 36 - $40,385 - $12,281,000 - 11/26/08
Slumdog Millionaire - $360,018 - 10 - $36,002 - $16,693,000 - 11/12/08
Doubt - $507,226 - 15 - $33,815 - $5,000,000 - 12/12/08
Changeling - $489,015 - 15 - $32,601 - $35,417,977 - 10/24/08
Rachel Getting Married - $293,369 - 9 - $32,597 - $9,785,033 - 10/3/08
Che - $61,070 - 2 - $30,535 - $108,961 - 12/12/08
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/12/the_perscreen_s.html