Fun with Math: The Huge Box Office Numbers for 'Precious'
Filed under: Box Office, Exhibition
The final numbers are in, and the estimated $1.8 million earned by Precious in its limited-release opening weekend wasn't an exaggeration. In fact, it was a little short: The Sundance-prize-winning, Oprah-endorsed indie drama actually made $1,872,458 between Friday and Sunday. (Numbers courtesy of Box Office Mojo.) The reason that's so impressive is that it was only playing in 18 theaters, for an average of $104,025 per theater. For comparison's sake, A Christmas Carol made $8,159 per theater. So let's put on our nerd hats and break down those Precious numbers. While it's only in 18 theaters, it played on 35 screens, because most cineplexes, anticipating the demand, booked two prints. (The per-screen average, therefore, was $53,499.) I looked at each theater's listings and added up how many showings the movie had over the weekend. That number was 507.
Then the math: It made $1,872,458 in 507 showings, for an average of $3,693 per showing. The average ticket price at the theaters in question is $11 (disregarding things like senior discounts and slightly cheaper prices for Friday matinees). That means each screening sold an average of about 335 tickets, which is surely the capacity for a lot of those theaters. That means a sell-out crowd for almost every screening. I guess I could have found out how many people each theater seats and determined exactly how many sell-outs there were, but that would be silly.
Box Office Mojo says the $104,025 per-theater average is the 12th highest ever -- but the 11 films ahead of it were all playing in no more than six locations. Precious played in 18 and still had a huge per-theater average. Any way you slice it, the delightful feel-good romp of the year opened with a splash.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-10-2009 @ 10:51AM
Christian M. Howell said...
I still don't understand the appeal of this movie. I'd only see it if the parents went to jail and got tortured, raped and killed.
How did two children come out of this "relationship" with no one the wiser?
Reply
11-12-2009 @ 8:02AM
Telisa said...
It was about some of the illiteracy that goes on in substandard environments. These are some of the issues that go on in not only American "backwoods", but in different demographical locations all over the world. This kind of "ignorance" or "incest" takes place sometimes between the family members of "well-off" society. A way to keep the wealth in the family.
This movie just depicts the bitter half of that kind of adversity. We all have some kind of skeleton in our closet that at any moment can pull us back into the place that we moved so hard to move away from. That is this movie in visual form.
Telisa