THB #634: It's The Weekends, Dummy!

There are a lot of ways to look at the theatrical box office. The second least sophisticated way to do it - amongst anyone who takes themselves at all seriously in this arena - is to compare annual totals or quarterly totals for the box office. It’s not an irrelevant stat, but it shows no interest in the details that are where the truth lives and breathes.

The Least sophisticated way of looking at the theatrical box office is to look at “ticket sales,” which are not a reliable metric. Never really has been, but now more than ever, with various levels of Premium screens which roll out at different price points, matinees, discount Tuesdays, etc, etc, etc. The details of what tickets sold in what cities at what price, etc, are incredibly important. But that is not information you actually see in public view. Analytics companies throw information out to media to get attention so they can sell their very expensive offerings to studios who will pay for the information… but it’s almost never…