Box Office ["BATTING"] Average (BOA)

First and foremost, the entertainment industry is very unique in it's measurement of success. We are the only people that love to tell the world what we made over the weekend selling our product. Imagine how ludicrous it is for a restaurant to tell it's customer, "come eat at Luigi's because we grossed $2700 this past weekend - that is two times the next highest pizza chain". Funny, huh? Nope -- that's Hollywood reality.

Hollywood or more specifically, Variety Publications, should measure success of a film not by box office earnings but rather ticket sales per showing. This would be more like a batting average for major league baseball players. When you stepped up to bat, did you get a hit or not. Box office earnings are victim to inflation, trends, and being spun by the everyday producer. Let’s do a case study:




My Bloody Valentine (3-d) vs. Law Abiding Citizen. Which one is a better film? Which one made more money? Of course, Valentine did in 8 weeks of release ($100M). Citizen, which was out for 7 weeks and was not distributed to foreign markets, did 60.4 million in sales. However, if we did the tickets sold per engagement batting average, which is of course difficult to do given the data now, I would venture to guess that Law Abiding Citizen would be batting an All Star .300 since it was on far less screens and Valentine would be batting an average .250 or less.

What does this have to do with movie watching and you, the audience member? Well that’s my second thought. You see, studio execs, producers, and marketing teams look at these box office numbers as if they are God. Literally, in offices around town (Hollywood) on Monday morning, everybody types in www.boxofficemojo.com or cracks their Variety or Hollywood Reporter open, which are virtually identical magazines, and then either pat themselves on the back or bow their heads in defeat. These box office numbers influence those that choose which films to make more than divine intervention ever could. For example, another three Bloody Valentine films will get made long before another Law Abiding Citizen.

You see, the audience speaks by watching a film. But then the numbers get spun by those that want to spin them (everybody in the Hollywood game). They get spun around so much that most of these poor studio execs don’t know their ass from their head. Thus, I say, use the batting average of tickets sold per engagement. This number will help guide these gentle and busy souls so that they can understand what a good film really is.


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