John Krier; Hollywood’s Head Statistician

John Krier, the venerable follower of films whose figures bespoke box office triumphs and failures and whose personal prognostications could mean life or death in the wildly competitive movie rental market, has died.

Krier died Saturday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center of the complications of age. He was 89.

Krier was a veteran leader in an industry in which even expensive productions often fail while low-budget, seemingly hopeless celluloid atrocities stay atop the heap for weeks.

His Exhibitor Relations Co. began in an era when box-office tallies were known to audiences only by the crowds (or lack of them) seated in the theater. Exhibitor Relations and similar firms developed more detailed information that was used by news media reporting the weekly winners and losers in the film industry.

Krier kept detailed records for holidays, three-day weekends, summer vacation offerings and year-end screenings. Buyers for theaters talked to him almost daily, as did reporters who were Hollywood specialists.

Krier was a former exhibitor who had been general manager of Intermountain Theaters. He moved to the ABC California theater company as general manager in 1972. In 1978, he joined Exhibitor Relations, working out of a nondescript office in West Hollywood with a handful of employees and shelves that contained the economic vital signs of films.

Those numbers were at the heart of the reports he issued regularly to all levels of the film business, often including lists of studios’ planned releases, acting critiques, plot analyses and forecasts for success.

He attended the major film festivals of the world, where he was questioned as if he were a star rather than a statistician with a sensitivity for success.

Krier was owner, president and leading spokesman for Exhibitor Relations; his vice president, Paul Dergarabedian, took over the company immediately upon Krier’s death and said there would be no interruption of services.

Krier is survived by his wife, Diane, sons John and Gary and two grandchildren.