Explanation of Box Office Terms and Abbreviations
Opening Weekend (OW) - A film's opening weekend is the first Friday to Sunday period that it is in release. Likewise, opening weekend box office refers to the money earned by a film in its first Friday-Sunday period. When we are talking about opening weekends, we are usually talking about the domestic opening weekend.
Occasionally, films will open on a Wednesday or a Thursday, especially during Holiday weekends. Box office earned before a film's first Friday is NOT counted in its opening weekend box office take. Often, articles and people discussing box office will refer to a 4-day or 5-day weekend if they want to include earnings from an early opening or Monday holiday.
NOTE: Following the mass theatre shooting during a midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora Colorado (in July 2012), studios have phased out midnight releases on Friday in favour of Thursday evening "preview showings". Almost every major release now has Thursday previews. This early Thursday business IS counted as part of the opening weekend box office. More specifically, it is lumped into the opening Friday total (even if some "previews" are now starting at 5-6pm on Thursday).
Domestic (DOM) Box Office - The domestic box office typically refers to the theatrical take of a film in the United States and Canada. Almost every wide release is distributed by the same studio on the same date in both countries. However, some limited releases (and especially foreign films) will get separate distribution in Canada.
Overseas (OS) or International (INT) Box Office - Overseas/International box office refers to the theatrical take of a film in all territories outside of the US and Canada. Despite not being "overseas" Latin America is counted here.
Worldwide (WW) Box Office - Worldwide box office is pretty much what it seems to be. The total theatrical take for a film worldwide.
Per Theatre Average (PTA) - The average amount of money made by each theatre/venue showing a film in a given day or weekend. To calculate a film's PTA, you take its weekend (or daily) gross and divide it by the number of venues exhibiting the film. Note, a film's PTA doesn't really give you an estimate of how much a film is bringing in per screen. A single screen drive-in and a multiplex showing a particular film on 5 screens are weighted the same in the theatre count.
PTA = Gross / Theatre Count
Opening Weekend Multiplier (OW Mult) - A film's opening weekend multiplier is calculated by dividing its total domestic gross by its opening weekend gross. This is often used as a measure of legs, especially for films in the same genre, or released around the same time of year.
OW Mult = DOM Gross / OW Gross
Here's a rough guide to judging the legs/longevity of a big blockbuster (especially one opening over $75M) based on its opening weekend multiplier:
Code:
[/INDENT]
[INDENT]OW Mult Legs/Longevity[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Less than 2.1x Very front-loaded[/INDENT]
[INDENT]2.1-2.4x Frontloaded[/INDENT]
[INDENT]2.4x-2.7x Average[/INDENT]
[INDENT]2.7x-3.0x Above Average[/INDENT]
[INDENT]Greater than 3.0x Exceptional[/INDENT]
[INDENT]
Films with more modest openings are often able to achieve opening weekend multipliers well in excess of 3.0x, making the guideline above less applicable. Animated blockbusters are often less front-loaded than live-action films as well.
When comparing opening weekend multipliers between films, you should make note of special circumstances, such as mid-week openings or a late December release. Because the opening weekend only counts the first Fri-Sun period of a film's release, movies opening on a Wednesday or Thursday will appear to have better OW multipliers than a Friday release. Weekday grosses in late December are significant;y inflated due to the winter holidays, leading to much higher multipliers. For instance, a 3.0x multiplier for a late December blockbuster would be considered frontloaded.
Internal Weekend Multiplier (Int Wkd Mult) - Another way to examine early signs of frontloading is to look at a film's internal weekend multiplier.
Int Wkd Mult = OW Gross / Opening Day Gross (including previews)
Films that have very large opening days, but steep drops on Saturday and Sunday will have low internal weekend multipliers. For instance, Batman v Superman has an internal multiplier of 2.04x its opening day. In other words, BvS' opening day accounted for close to half of its first weekend take. The Jungle book was on the other end of the spectrum, having a very large Saturday bump, and dropping little from Friday to Sunday. It's internal multiplier was 3.23x its opening day.
While Internal weekend multipliers don't perfectly correlate with opening weekend multipliers, they can offer some clues on how a film's run will play out in coming weeks.
Publicized Production Budgets - When we talk about a film's budget, we are almost always talking about the publicized net production budget. The production budget is how much a film cost to make, including pre-production, production/filming, and post production (SFX work, editing, scoring, reshoots, etc). It does NOT include the cost to market and distribute a film (often referred to as P&A costs).
The net production budget is the production budget minus any tax breaks. Studios will often pick shooting locations based on government sponsored incentives. Usually in the form of tax rebates or grants.
The publicized production budget is how much the studio is claiming to have spent on production, after tax rebates. Often the publicized amount is fairly close to the actual amount, but there is nothing to prevent studios from reporting false budgets to manipulate public perception of a film's performance. Thanks to public tax records in countries like the UK, we have several cases of reported budgets not matching the official numbers.
Let's look at Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides as an example.
Publicized Production Budget (as seen on BOM) - $250 million
Gross Production Budget (as reported for tax purposes) - $410.6 million
Net Production Budget (after tax rebates) - $378.5 million
As mentioned above, reported budgets do not include marketing. A typical worldwide release will include marketing costs of at least $50M, with blockbusters most often landing in the $100-175M range for marketing (not counting commercial spends by partner companies with product placement deals).
Marketing costs have the most impact on low budget films. While films like Get Out often have budgets that are under $5M, most wide releases (especially those debuting in over 2500 venues) are going to come with marketing costs of at least $20M. Making the production budget a small minority of the total costs.
