Researching American Films' "No Longer in Theaters" Dates?
July 23, 2016 10:13 AM   Subscribe

Is there a way to check to see when an American major production stopped being shown in theaters? The release dates are easy enough to find, but can the cut-off dates for theatrical release showings be researched?

In particular, when specifically did Jurassic Park from 1993 end its theatrical release period? (and how did you find that out?)
posted by Quarter Pincher to Media & Arts (5 answers total)
 
Well Variety and the Hollywood Reporter have always reported on each week's film grosses. IIRC their charts are in-depth, including the number of screens, so you should be able to go back through them and track the grosses as the screen number diminishes to eventually zero. Not sure if their archives are online and/or searchable.
posted by BlahLaLa at 10:30 AM on July 23, 2016


It's much harder to do this because an opening day is a hard line and a closing day is a slow fade. Tracing the weekly grosses is a good bet, because you'll see the big picture of when it isn't really a "major" release anymore, even if it's still being shown on Saturday afternoons or in second-run theaters for a while...
posted by gerryblog at 10:50 AM on July 23, 2016


Response by poster: In that vein, then, is there a good place to search for this week-by-week breakdown reliably, or need I just happen to catch a certain issue of a magazine that prints it? =/
posted by Quarter Pincher at 11:15 AM on July 23, 2016


Best answer: Box Office Mojo reports weekly JURASSIC PARK grosses all the way to October 20th, 1994. It looks like it dropped off-screen in May 1994, but then popped back up in August 1994 for a few months.
posted by eschatfische at 11:16 AM on July 23, 2016 [2 favorites]


a related complication - in the age of digital and a quicker path to home viewing this may or may not be "a thing" anymore, but it was common to have older theaters be a "second string" budget house for $1 and $2 shows. So the film would be in the "varsity" movie multi-plexes for a time, then move to the older theaters - the floors were stickier, the prints were scratched-up-ier, but you got in for WAYYY less. These places tended to draw pretty big crowds on movies that would have been hits a few months earlier. This might explain the numbers on Jurassic Park.
posted by randomkeystrike at 5:09 PM on July 23, 2016


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