Comments on: judging a flop

Question: judging a flop

goethean — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:09:17 -0800

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?

By: blazingunicorn

blazingunicorn — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:24:19 -0800

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.

By: BlahLaLa

BlahLaLa — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 13:28:43 -0800

50% of the total gross, generally, when you're talking about a studio movies, in the US.

By: acidic

acidic — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:19:13 -0800

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.

By: southof40

southof40 — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:59:39 -0800

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.