judging a flop

October 30, 2012 1:09 PM

What percentage (either of a movie's production budget or of the final receipts) of a movie's box office receipts are expected to be produced in the opening weekend?
posted by goethean to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Best answer: I have no idea, but it ranges immensely depending on things like repeat viewings, word-of-mouth, and demographics of the audience.

For example, The Dark Knight Rises made $160 million in its opening weekend and $447 million overall (domestic), whereas Titanic—the extreme on the other end—"only" made $28 million in its opening weekend, but went on to gross over $600 million overall.
posted by blazingunicorn at 1:24 PM on October 30, 2012

Best answer: 50% of the total gross, generally, when you're talking about a studio movies, in the US.
posted by BlahLaLa at 1:28 PM on October 30, 2012

Best answer: Here you can look at ~1500 opening weekends (navigate using the $ tabs at top) and see the percentage of total gross. Most opening weekends are between 20% and 45% of total gross. Take a look also at the same list when sorted from smallest to highest percentage.
posted by acidic at 2:19 PM on October 30, 2012

Best answer: I don't know if you care but many US produced movies make a significant part of their return outside of the USA so talking of the % of their total receipts compared a US 'opening weekend' is a bit confusing.

As an example Avatar had approx three times the amount of non-US revenues compared to US revenues. So 'opening weekend' (in the USA) was either 10% of total US revenues or 2.5% of worldwide revenues.
posted by southof40 at 2:59 PM on October 30, 2012