CinemaScore grades now available to public

CinemaScore, the polling service whose grades for movies have become a widely used shorthand for what the public thinks of a new release, is posting its grades on a public website for the first time.

The Las Vegas-based company this week launched a redesigned version of its website featuring grades for films released in the past three months. Visitors to CinemaScore.com can now see that “The Dark Knight Rises” got an A, for instance, while “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” received a C+. New grades are typically posted late Friday night.

More detailed information breaking down the grades by demographic groups, along with historical data, is still available only to studios that pay thousands of dollars a year for subscriptions.

But the basic grade that films receive are now regularly reported by entertainment journalists. CinemaScore calculates its grades by polling moviegoers in 25 cities across the nation.

“The intention was always to share this information with the public,” explained CinemaScore president Ed Mintz. “Twelve years ago we built a website, but we couldn’t get enough advertising dollars and we pulled it. Then the studios started saying ‘Whoa, we want that data,’ and we started working only with them.”

Mintz said if he’s able to sell ads and generate revenue from CinemaScore.com, he may share more information with the public.

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