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Why do we use box office sales to determine a films popular success?


Why not just count the number of tickets sold? Your movie put this many butts in the seats, period. Seems much more logical.

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I agree that tickets sold is a better indicator of popularity. Of course, as far as the studios go, it all comes down to $$$$$$.

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Sure, and that can be measured too, but they definitely lean on money earned. Hell, at least they should be honest and simply go by the profit. When a lower budget movie sells 500 million in tickets, it's much more impressive.

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We could call it the arse chart (I’m kidding, I agree with you).

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Because it’s all about money. I stopped watching awards shows, especially music ones when I realised people were just being rewarded for sales rather than making anything special.

Just like music tickets sold for movies isn’t necessarily an indicator of bums on seats either. There were stories about elite African Americans buying up tickets in support of The Woman King for example. And it still didn’t do well.

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I'd imagine those type of stunt purchases are essentially insignificant.

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Probably. Even if they bought out a whole cinema for one or two sessions it adds up to nothing really. You would have to buy out whole states to make some impact. And I don't think movie stars etc like to part with their money, at least when it concerns helping others.

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It's sad that they know it's necessary when it is a sub par film.

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theres a place near me that ALWAYS has a couple unheard of Bollywood films playing. For fun, I decided to check one out. Online, almost ALL the seats were sold. I assumed a large indian community would be at the theater.
There were only 4 people and I sat where I wanted to.
I guess buying out the seats is a thing.
You would think I could say, "May seat is already paid for" and get in free. i might try that next time

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Interesting, I wonder what that is all about, some wealthy Indian group or individual buying up all the seats or is it the cinema exercising crowd control and limiting attendees for whatever reason? I know the latter is an odd thing to do but you just never know.

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I just checked tonight. I'm in middle america, but three out of the 12plex are unknown indian films. most were completely empty, one had 4 seats booked. its weird.

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I agree.
However money is always interesting to talk about.

The Barbie movie cost about $100M to produce and is approaching $1.3B global box office. Pretty amazing, maybe some kind of record!

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The Barbie budget was almost 50% more than that. That was the original budget, but it ended up at over 145 million. Also, barbie is doing really well, but they went crazy on a marketing budget, $150 million in fact, which has to be considered too. It has done great, but it isn't going to be setting any records unless you look at more obscure benchmarks, like being the highest earning Warner Bros. movie.

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Oh, yes, marketing is a big tag price on a major picture.
I didn’t know it went over budget. Still, pretty dang impressive box office!

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There would probably be a lot of gimmicks used to sell tickets such as: big discounts, give-aways to lure people in, and someone buying up tickets just to inflate the numbers. That being said, using total receipts has its flaws too. Some films are not widely released or get eclipsed by a blockbuster movie that gets all the attention.

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I've never used box office sales for that. Not all good films actually do well in the theaters, and sometimes shitty films rake in lots of dough. You have to look at the film itself to determine if it's actually good or not.

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Here's an indicator of really overwhelming success: Is your movie SO popular it adds new words to your language???

I say that because "Barbiecore" seems to be a word that appeared this summer.

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never heard it , and now having heard it , cant imagine what it means .
I feel it will not catch on

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It's a fashion term, meant to describe anything extremely girly and/or bright pink. If you haven't heard it, you're just hanging around with the wrong people.

And who knows whether the term will catch on, or stay in fashion circles. "Gaslighting" originated from a movie, and took decades to become extremely popular.

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Thanks for clearing up the definition


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interesting. What movie is gaslighting from?

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Uggh, I hate that term ‘gaslighting.’

So stupid.

Just say ‘I lied to that turkey!!’

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Gaslight (1944), in which Charles Boyer tries to convince his wife Ingrid Bergman that she's going insane. Part of this deception involves telling her that the gaslights don't really dim when he's not home -- she's just imagining it. Hence: gaslighting.

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Holy shit, that's a super old reference. That's cool to know, thank you.

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Yeah. It's just the simplest and most impressive-sounding headline number for marketing purposes, and because of inflation it gives the impression that recent films routinely outperform older films.

In and of itself, total box office doesn't matter that much, because -- without reference to costs -- it tells us nothing about profit. A billion dollar movie would be more impressive if the production and promotion had cost $50m, as opposed to one that cost $350m. But they don't tend to lead with that.

In any case, the big studios routinely employ all manner of underhand accounting tricks to fudge both their costs and their incomes, so none of these figures are to be entirely trusted anyway.




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Fair point.

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