It’s one of the biggest goals and greatest accomplishments when it comes to movie studios and new releases: winning the Weekend Box Office. Industry insiders, the movie media and film fans eagerly await the results, which come-out every Sunday morning, typically between 10am and Noon ET. Immediately “Top 10 List” are compiled and posted on websites such as BoxOfficeMojo.com and BoxOffice.com. And not too long after that, Entertainment Weekly, Variety and The Hollywood Reporter are out with their analysis, breaking down the hits and misses, the successes and the bombs.
However, these are key element in this equation that, shockingly, goes almost completely unnoticed: the money figures we get every Sunday are never, truly accurate. They are “Weekend Estimates”, with studios being forced to guess how their films will do on Sunday. The Weekend Actuals, the exact amount each movie actually made, are not released until mid-to-late afternoon on Monday, after every ticket is counted. But the funny thing is: No one pays attention to the actuals. By the time that list is released everyone’s already had 24-hours of news of the #1 Film in America, even if, in some cases, that isn’t really the case. The fact is, no one in the media or the public is really interested in how the films actually did at the box office. And studios would rather get “guesstimates” out on Sunday than wait and get the real results out on Monday.
Two weeks ago, when “Jurassic World” opened to an estimated $204.6 million, it made headlines everywhere as the “Second Biggest US Opening of All-Time”. That was Sunday. But a day later, when the actuals were released, that headline changed to “Biggest US Open of All-Time”, following as Universal’s announcement of the legitimate opening weekend total of $208.8 million. The movie industry was clearly caught by surprise.
This past Sunday, “JW”‘s second weekend take was estimated at $102 million – the dollar amount you saw everywhere online. Monday afternoon that number grew to $106.6 million. But did anyone make a big fuss that “JW” had the biggest second weekend of all-time? Nope.
Why has the movie industry accepted this practice? Because studio executives realize it’s better to be fast – get the news out ASAP – than be right. And with Sundays normally being slow news days, Weekend Box Office results, even though they’re not legit, get the attention they wouldn’t get on Monday.
But this is still pretty amazing. In practically every other business, accuracy in figures and dollar amounts is crucial. Imagine if they estimated Stock Market prices or final scores at sporting events. Ridiculous, right? Yet most people have no problem, each and every week, accepting the fact that one of the most important entertainment news items is, in fact, an estimate.