How to Know What's Going to Be a Box Office Hit

Hey, it looks like I've finally hit the bigtime! Barca asked me to do a weekly/bi-weekly/monthly column for the Box Office version of this game and I said, "How much does it pay?" No, you can guess what I really said. Anyways, I'm not really going to start with a column per se, but a guide for you to determine for yourself what are good BO picks or not. Its mostly simple, some of it is obvious, and some is elementary but I overlook it sometimes and pick films like Wolverine, Bruno, and Land of the Lost (didn't have it on a slate, but drafted it in the full year).

Some Thoughts to Begin:

-The most important thing to remember about playing Box Office is that a film will not make money if no one wants to see it. Most everything I say from now on will just extrapolate upon this truth.

-Clear your mind of what you like when picking. Since you are not the average theater-goer, it is safe to assume that you will not be able to predict what will/will not be liked by the general population using your personal tastes and prefrences. It is safer to use other people as Guinea Pigs in your Box Office experiments because the more people you can average out the closer you are to average, but I would warn you not to look on film sites like IMDB, BoxOfficeMojo, etc to see that they are looking forward to because they are not the average theater-goer either. A better site (for this purpose ONLY) is Yahoo! Movies and Fandango records. I never use these sites as I rely on people I know more than that. I do use HSX to get a general idea of what people in our situation are thinking and you'll probably see those numbers a lot in future columns.

-Sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind and just go with your gut. It sounds corny, but sometimes things just don't make sense. Like I will never understand how Marley & Me did so well. It didn't look good, I never heard anyone say "I gotta see that," but it did well. Usually, though, its best to follow a few pointers.

-Ok, now that these points are out of the way, the simple way of putting box office is this way: Opening x Legs = Outcome. That's easy enough, but these must be broken down even more, which is what this part of the guide is all about.

Opening

How can you tell how high something is going to open? You can estimate this by looking at a few things. Target audience, buzz, marketing, and theater count. Basically, what you're looking for is a large target audience and an very interested target audience. When both of those hit, the sky is the limit, but you can still make out pretty well with a very large audience or a very interested audience as long as the other one isn't extremely small. Some examples:

Twilight: Small(er) audience, massive interest from that audience, $69 M opening.
G.I. Joe: Massive (potential) audience, little interest from that audience, $55 M opening.
The Dark Knight: Massive audience, massive interest from that audience, $158 M opening.

Marketing is really included in the "buzz" catagory, but I'd like to say that if a film has no marketing, don't even think about it because that means that awareness is low. For theater count, the only thing I really look for is how wide it is. If its not wide it won't normally pan out unless its in a November and/or December league, then it may offer enough theaters in January and February to make it worth your while.

Legs

For those who are new to the game, the term "legs" refers to how well a film holds its gross from week to week. If it drops 40% or less, then it will probably have good legs throughout. A drop of 50% is about average. A drop of 60% is pretty bad, though sometimes acceptable if your film surpassed expectations already. Anything over that is horrible.

Here's how you can kind of quantify "legs." Legs are determined mostly by how good the film is percieved to be by the target audience. This includes repeat viewings and word of mouth--people that have seen the film telling other people whether it is good or bad. If people tell others its a great film, others will probably go and see it. If a large amount of people see the movie again... Well, that just writes itself.

Also if the film is liked enough by the general population, that helps as well. For instance, wide releases that make the IMDB Top 250 in their first weekend of release tend to have great legs. So far in 2009 there's been The Hangover, Up, Star Trek, and now District 9. You can probably guess how District 9 is going to turn out. If a film is considered by the Oscars, it will have better legs because of it as well.

You can tell that something is going to have great legs ahead of time if a film was reviewed before it comes out and its close to unanimous that its a great film, it will probably have great legs as well.

Lastly, a film can be viewed by a target audience enough that it becomes a fad. This can be the best thing to happen to a film. When your second cousin calls you up and says "You haven't seen ______? What are you, DEAD?" Then you know it has become a fad.

Anyways, that's about it. Remember to look for buzz, a large target audience, and how well the film looks to other people. Above all, think of what other people want to see and grab that.

Anything that you want to add about how you find box office success, please just reply to this topic. I was told that the September pricing would be up next week, so I'll preview September's box office possibilities next week.

good job, W!

Great stuff.

I didn't think The Dark Knight had a massive audience before it came out - shows how much I know....

I love this idea, W. It's very much like the column that Mr. Informative had back on FM. Glad to see you picking up the ball and running with it!

Another film that falls under the Twilight category: 300. You really didn't hear much about the film or see a huge interest from audiences beforehand but that small audience was very passionate about the film and it opened to $70 million.

To this day, I'm still trying to figure out how it nearly tripled Sin City's numbers.

300 became one of those films that I mentioned before where a friend is like, "You haven't seen 300?!? What are you, GAY?"

I wasn't into all of this when 300 came out, so I couldn't really tell you about the opening, but I know for sure it fit into the "fad" catagory.

I didn't see 300 until it went into second run. The film didn't look like a must see to me and my mother wasn't willing to accompany me to a showing (I was sixteen at the time) so I had to wait until second run to see it at the only theatre around here where they don't care about how old you are when you buy a ticket.

W wrote:300 became one of those films that I mentioned before where a friend is like, "You haven't seen 300?!? What are you, GAY?"

Oh, the irony in that quote...

Buscemi wrote:I didn't see 300 until it went into second run. The film didn't look like a must see to me and my mother wasn't willing to accompany me to a showing (I was sixteen at the time) so I had to wait until second run to see it at the only theatre around here where they don't care about how old you are when you buy a ticket.

Hell, I just saw it a couple of months ago. :)

I think you are crazy Boush. The buzz around 300 was insanely huge! It had one of the best trailers ever, and it had people saying "I need to see this immediately." Just because you didn't like the trailer doesn't mean it didn't have normal people buzzing. Its quite the opposite actually. Then, as W said, it became a "You HAVE to see this" film.

So, since no one has anything to add in how they make Box Office picks, this must be exactly how everyone else does it, right? LOL.

Geezer, I never heard or saw any buzz for the film until after it opened. The only interest seemed to come from people who liked Sin City and also, I never saw the trailer shown before any films. Hell, I remember Hannibal Rising and The Hills Have Eyes 2 having more buzz than 300 and those movies flopped.

How I do my box office picks:

-I look at the track records for the actors involved
-I look at how early buzz has been
-I see who is distributing (this is so I know if a film will get a decent ad campaign or not)
-I notice who can sell a film and who is box office poison
-And, last I look at the price to see if it is worth it

I tend to go with five factors:
1. My gut, it rarely steers me wrong, sometimes, but rarely.
2. HSX. Thank god anny let this cat out of the bag! No wonder he was always so damn good at this game.
3. Theater counts. A good or poor theater count is a great indicator of what your film could potentially bring in.
4. Miscellaneous information. Stuff I pick up from reading on here or other places, like that Time Traveler's Wife has been flying off book store shelves for months, or that everyone is insanely excited about the Hangover.
5. Was this movie made by Tyler Perry? Because it will be a surefire hit if it was.

Where I come from, audiences can be unpredictable. There was hardly any buzz for 300 and The Hangover's trailer hardly got any reaction from audiences. Meanwhile, Miss March got a great audience reaction when I saw the trailer before a showing of Taken (despite the fact that the film looked like a glorified straight-to-video film).