Hollywood Motion Pictures. Those Four

¶ … Hollywood motion pictures. Those four variables include the gross sales revenue from the picture's opening weekend, the total gross sales over the theatre life of the film, the number of theatres the film is shown in and the number of weeks that a motion picture remains in the top sixty. Other variables contribute to the success as well, but are oftentimes not as highly touted as the picture's opening and continuing take from the box office.

The opening box office numbers are oftentimes announced on radio and television in the guise of "this is what is hot at the box office." This can be especially true when a highly anticipated film has been released. Case in point is one of the biggest box office hits ever; "Titanic." Due to be released in early July, it had to be postponed a number of times due to its complexity. Cost of the picture was astronomical, it had to "earn $400 million worldwide just to break even" (Travers, 1997, p. 121).

This picture was one of the most highly anticipated movies of its time and James Cameron, the director of the film, worried that the pundits were correct when they scoffed at a movie bringing in that much money. He was quoted as recognizing the "parallel of this summer's movies driving straight at that iceberg" (Travers, p. 121). The film opened as anticipated, and set record sales and attendance levels. The opening weekend came in at over 50 million dollars, and it was a sure sign of good things ahead. It became the all time leading motion picture staying in the top 60 for nearly 6 months. The film was only recently surpassed by Avatar staying on top of the money making list for almost 13 years.

Opening weekend numbers don't always portend success at the box office, but a correlation does exist. The three top grossing films on our list; 1) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, 2) Batman Begins and 3) Mr. And Mrs. Smith all grossed over 186 million dollars. Harry Potter topped the list at $287 million, Batman grossed over $205 million and Mr. Smith totaled over $186 million. Their opening weekends were all strong as well. Potter opened with $102 million, Batman opened with $48 million and Mr. Smith came out with just over $50 million. Interestingly enough Coach Carter had a really strong opening weekend, raking in over $29 million dollars, but total revenue for the film topped out at just over $67 million.

One factor that does not seem to correlate as well as the above two is the number of weeks a picture spends in the top 60. The highest on our list was Ladies in Lavender who spent 22 weeks in the top 60 but grossed a paltry $6.6 million dollars. This could be due to the fact that it was only shown in 119 theaters as compared to a Harry Potter that was shown in over 3850 theaters throughout the country. In comparison, Harry Potter maintained a stay in the top 60 for only 13 weeks. If one were to state that Ladies in Lavender was a high-performance outlier then based on the fact that it was in the top 60 longer than any other film on our list, that would be correct. However, if success is being judged as to the amount of revenue being produced, then the high outliers would have to be the three films mentioned above.

Another factor that should be considered but is not included in these four variables is the cost to produce the movie. Ladies in Lavender grossed only $6.6 million, however if it only cost a million or less to produce, then the return on investment was very substantial.

Comparing the return on Titanic that had to gross over $400 million to break even, to generate the same rate of return it would have had to gross nearly $2.4 billion dollars. That's asking a lot of one movie no matter how great the film.