Interesting insight about movie revenue by LoveThatFireFly

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Interesting insight about movie revenue

POSTED BY: LOVETHATFIREFLY
UPDATED: Thursday, January 12, 2006 15:41
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Thursday, January 12, 2006 3:41 PM

I have often wondered how much the "gross sales" at the theaters actually put back in the movie maker's pocket.

(Seems that the 25.3 million take Serenity got in the Box Office had much less impact in Universal's pockets unless they owned a good many of the Theaters!)

Found this answer when googling something else:

When movies play in a theater, the theater owner and the distributor (which is often also the same company that produced the movie, in whole or in part, or paid a significant sum of money to acquire it) split the ticket-sale revenue.

The distributor bears all of the not-inconsiderable cost of prints and advertising; theater owners keep all the money from concessions (candy, soda, popcorn, nachos, hot dogs etc), which bring in far more than admissions.

The percentage of the box-office proceeds that goes to the distributor is highest in the movie's opening weeks and subsequently drops steadily. I'm sure you can see where this is going: The longer the movie plays, the greater the proportion of revenue that goes to the theater owner and the smaller the proportion that goes to the distributor....

Serenity, which cost $39 million, opened modestly on September 30, taking in a little more than $10 million on almost 2,200 screens in three days.... but it fell off almost 50 percent the following weekend and dropped to No. 8 on the chart; by its third week it was out of the Top 10 and had lost 500 theaters and by its fourth it was careening down the chart and playing in fewer than 900 theaters. It wound up making about $25.3 million. My read is that despite strong reviews...

Original text: http://www.tvguide.com/Movies/FlickChick/default.htm?rmDate=12082005

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