THB #55: A Forensic Look At The Box Office

I have been analyzing box office since I was, quite literally, a child. I grew up on A.D. Murphy and what, back then, were big thick editions of Variety that charted the history of the box office. I don’t know why it always interested me. I am not a mathematician by any means. But I was always interested in the evolution and trends in the industry.

While so many are glomming onto the West Side Story opening to sell their same old line of “insight” into the industry, I thought to myself, “Self… what if we try to do something really dry and simple to give readers perspective on one weekend’s slice of box office, as objectively as possible?” So, this column.

The chart below is this same weekend in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and this last weekend. You can click on it to expand it and make it more readable, if you like

10 Simple Facts About These 2 Weekends

1. This last weekend, 1 movie opened wide (over 1500 screens), totalling $10.5 million. In 2019, 3 movies opened wide, totalling $68 million. Th…