Hollywood’s scariest scene: Opening weekend

Rentrak helped initiate a sped-up process of hourly updates, fueled by electronic tracking. According to Ron Giambra, head of Rentrak’s theatrical group, Rentrak receives data electronically, ticket by ticket, seconds after the sale in 78 percent of theaters.

Come Sunday, both Nielsen EDI and Rentrak send their numbers to the studios, who in turn supply the weekend estimate. Each studio tabulates the estimate for its own film, factoring in the expected gross from Sunday, based on the movie’s performance on Friday and Saturday.

That number soon hits every major media outlet in the country. Which action figure “slayed” the competition? Which comedy laughed all the way the bank? For the answers, many news outlets turn to Paul Dergarabedian, the president of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations — and for many, the face of the box office.

“It used to be an industry inside information kind of thing,” he says. “I’ve seen it really take on a life of its own. It reminds me of anything that gets into the big dollar amounts, like the lottery or stock prices going up.

“People are just fascinated when it comes to these big numbers.”

Crunching numbers
Behind those big numbers is a large amount of calculation. Since the box office is reported well before Sunday is over, every studio has its own model for constructing estimates based on history.

Dade Hayes, who with Jonathan Bing co-wrote the 2004 book “Open Wide,” about the national box office obsession, explains that studios are impressively accurate in predicting “patterns of consumption.”

“It’s a little depressing, really,” Hayes says. “It’s a testament to how efficient they are at marketing these things.”

In figuring the Sunday box office estimate, studios will also compute what’s called a “missing factor,” which often relates to weather or a major sporting event. Everything from the NCAA basketball tournament to Father’s Day can affect the weekend gross.

Hayes says there can be “a little bit of monkey business” in this area. In 1997, Miramax estimated the take of “Scream 2” at $39 million on Sunday, only to revise it down to about $33 million the next day — prompting industrywide criticism.

“It’s kind of if you had a report card and the last subject said ‘Fill in your own grade,’ sometimes they give themselves an ‘A,”’ Hayes says.

Even the final Monday box office report is, in the end, tabulated by the studios. When asked to describe the accuracy of that number, an executive for Nielsen EDI declined to do so.

The heads of distribution for Universal, Disney and Warner Bros. all declined to comment for this article.

Situations like “Scream 2” — which caused considerable embarrassment for Harvey Weinstein and Miramax — are rare. Recently, the record-setting $135 million opening for “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” actually improved from the Sunday estimate to the final Monday number, by nearly $3 million.

While the perception of a movie’s success or failure still largely hinges on its opening weekend gross, it matters less and less for the bottom line. For big summer movies, international box office is often triple the domestic gross. DVD profits rival theatrical grosses.

But neither the European box office nor a special-edition DVD will ever churn Hollywood’s stomachs quite like opening weekend.

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