The All-time Worldwide B.O. Champ |
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In recent years, a new Sunday ritual has entered my life – perhaps it has crept into yours as well. After church, my ears prick up awaiting news via Internet, radio, or television, about the weekend box office grosses. Will THE BREAK-UP hold its own up against CARS? Can the X-MEN crack THE DA VINCI CODE (almost $700 million worldwide)? Will some reasonably budgeted movie trounce an over-bloated epic such as POSEIDON? I want to know.
It troubles me that I want to know. Grosses seem – well, gross. My conscience tells me that my interest in movies should rest elsewhere. I should be primarily interested in the quality and value of a flick. Quite simply, I'm concerned that I, and maybe you, put too much weight on the number of dollars, yen, pesos, and pounds we spend to see movies.
In Los Angeles County where I live, this "gross" interest is even more pronounced because the county is the physical epicenter of the motion picture industry.
It wasn't always this way. Pre ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT, and the other entertainment news television series, the only people who cared about box office grosses were the industry insiders who read VARIETY, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, or BOXOFFICE 
Number 2 With A Bullet |
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magazine.
With the advent of the television entertainment news shows, almost everyone embraced two businesses: their own, and the motion picture business. The media began reporting box office grosses, both to satisfy public curiosity, and so that marketing departments could advertise their latest hit as The Number 1 Motion Picture in America, or The Number 1 Motion Picture in the World.
So what does our obsession with the Weekend Box Office Gross really get us? Not much. At least, not anymore. In a long ago time, when the studios owned the theaters and wheeled away locked boxes of cold hard cash from them, the box office numbers meant something. Today, the numbers have little real meaning other than to measure the effectiveness of the studios' multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns. The Sunday numbers we so eagerly await are nothing more than "projections," not actual tallies.
We'd all be better off obsessing on the quality and value of the latest box office offerings, rather than on the money they make. The motion picture industry would benefit, too. The better flicks we'd like to see might actually be made if we were more interested in how good of a film SUPERMAN 
Harry's wizardry grossed out the B.O. |
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RETURNS is rather than focusing on the receipts from the June 30 Weekend.
Instead of pricking up our ears on Sunday afternoon in anticipation of Weekend Grosses, I suggest that we do the following:
1. See a movie over the weekend.
2. Following the movie, discuss it with your date, with others at your performance, or with family and friends who have also seen the flick. Mull it over in your own head.
3. Ask yourself: Was this motion picture worth the price of admission? Did the story, cast, or the director show me something new, or was this more of the same from the filmmakers? Was I entertained, enlightened, or was my life otherwise enhanced by seeing this movie? Did this movie break societal ground, somehow uplift a suppressed people, introduce new ideas, or stimulate original thinking? Why would I recommend it to others?
Sure, it's nice to know that others appreciate and value our favorite movies, spiking their box office gross. But motion pictures should not be made solely in order that they can be touted as the Number 1 Picture in America, or in the World. And we shouldn't race to the box office because others have paid fortunes to see a particular movie.
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| The Business of Show |
Every other Friday
Does advertising, public taste, or overindulged stars determine a movie's box office fate? Christoper Stone explores what's going on behind the box office.
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| Christopher Stone |
Christopher Stone is the author of the international best seller Re-Creating Your Self. With Mary Sheldon, he co-authored three highly successful hardcover books of guided meditations.
He is a member of the Writers Guild of America, West.
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| Contact |
If you have a comment, question, or suggestion, you can send a message to Christopher Stone by clicking here.
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