mike | 18 Jul 2011 | 1,220 Views | 4 Likes | 1 Dislikes

HP7.2 does Boffo B.O.! And we couldn't care less

Did you know that Harry Potter 7.2 made a whole bunch of money at the box office this weekend!? It made soooo much, in fact, that it broke the record for most money made by a movie in a weekend! Its domestic gross, which is the sum of all of the tickets sold in America and Canada, was $10 million more than the amount of money grossed domestically by the last record holder, The Dark Knight!

Are you happy you know that? I'm not. I can't help but know it, though, and you can't either: it's literally front page news (OK, fine… "home page news"). Box office - what it is and that we should for some reason care about it at all - is something that's entered the public consciousness in the past 20 years, seemingly out of nowhere.

Why do we care, though? Why is it news at all? We don't get any of that money. The business of film financing is so complex that it's impossible for us normal folk to have any real idea where any of that money goes, so the news that HP 7.2 made almost $200M in a weekend doesn't even have the visceral "this person just won the lottery" thrill that's behind the occasional "this person just won the lottery" news stories. The money, the huge sums of money belong to the abstract concept of "Harry Potter movie", but we're still fascinated. Why?

Just a quick warning here, at the mid-point: I'm going to get a little conspiracy theoryish here.

Answer: we care because we've been told to care. The media (and I mean here specifically the actual big international media conglomerates, I realize how crazy I sound saying "the media" and know that it is not one monumental entity) has told us that opening weekend box office is important, that it's worth talking about, because we then begin to "root" for films we like to have big opening weekends. Seeing movies as soon as possible is now de rigeur, and that's in my opinion at least partly down to the concerted efforts of the people selling the movie and their repeated emphasis on the importance of opening weekend numbers. We care because it's news, and it's news because the people that own movie studios, who also own TV stations and websites and newspapers want it to be news.

Because here's the thing. The studios, distribution companies etc. - the businesses that make money off of Harry Potter - they make more money, in most cases, off of tickets sold during opening weekend than they do off of tickets sold a month after. It's that simple.

The deals between a distribution company and a movie theatre are themselves very complex, but one thing that's almost always true is that the percentage of a ticket price that goes to the theatre owner/operator goes up over time. To start, on opening weekend, 80% or more - sometimes even 100% - of a ticket's price goes straight to the studio. It vanishes. It's not until four, five weeks later that the theatre actually starts to make real money on a ticket, usually about four or five weeks after the distribution company has stopped marketing the film at all in most cases.

Is it a coincidence? Are most inexplicable behavioural trends that end up massively benefiting giant corporations coincidences? That was a sarcastic rhetorical question, by the way.

We don't care how much money the new Game of Thrones book made in its first week, we don't care how many Ford Focuses Ford sold last week. There's no time pressure for the people selling those things, other than the normal depreciation of product sitting on a lot or a shelf. With movies, though, the studios make significantly more money if people see their movies on opening weekend, and we, for some reason, really care about opening weekend box office numbers.

The media didn't start reporting on weekend box office ex nihilo. It benefits the studios in a tangible, quantifiable way that people rush to see the movies they're excited about on opening weekend, rather than waiting a couple of weeks. And so weekend box office - the "battle" between summer franchises for top spot on the weekend - was turned into a news story that we now care about.

Not me, though, which is why we won't from this point on report on weekend box-office. I don't know anyone that will make money from Harry Potter 7.2's weekend gross. I do know, however, people that work at theatres, people that live where I live, and I do know that when theatres make less money on ticket sales they look to alternative means of coin, namely super annoying advertising. I want the teens that work at cineplex to keep their jobs, I'd rather split my $14 between them and the movie studio, and I'd selfishly rather be spared 30 minutes of pre-show ads. That's why I don't care about weekend box office, and why you shouldn't, either.

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