Hollywood’s Numbers Game: the Box-Office Guess-timates

Ever since the media began reporting the weekend estimates of box-office grosses, the studios have sought to use these imprecise figures to their advantage as a way to turn a hit film into a bigger hit.

“Box-office results have become a consumer spectator sport,” says one studio executive, who asked not to be identified. “And that has sometimes led to a game of liar’s poker.”

Mark Shmuger, head of marketing for Universal Pictures, notes that audiences will want to see a movie simply because it is the No. 1 film of the week. That same thinking has been broadened to include any movie in the top five--the number usually given on TV news graphics.

Trouble is, the preliminary figures, gathered by the studios and released on Sunday morning, are imprecise and sometimes deliberately exaggerated, yet they have supplanted the real weekend grosses as a measure of a film’s initial success.

In recent weeks, the box-office grosses for such films as “The World Is Not Enough” and “Pokemon” have been estimated at more than $1 million over their final opening weekend figures. This past weekend, the three top films--”Toy Story 2,” “The Green Mile,” and “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo”--each had estimates from $500,000 to $800,000 over its final tally. Other recent films such as “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Bachelor” have ended up around $500,000 below early projections.

Even when the figures don’t vary that much, they can be padded as part of a jockeying game for a more favorable position. On one weekend in mid-October, the Sunday estimates placed Paramount’s “Double Jeopardy” in first place, Universal’s “The Story of Us” in second and Fox’s “The Fight Club” in third. By Monday, the final numbers revealed that “Fight Club” had been the biggest grosser, followed by “Jeopardy” and “The Story of Us.”

“The Sunday story is the first thing everyone sees, and it’s become very important,” says Paul Dergarabedian, who runs Exhibitor Relations, a tracking service that releases the industry estimates on Sunday morning. (These figures are used by The Times for its Monday box-office report).

“When the [‘Star Wars Episode I’] ‘Phantom Menace’ was expected to gross $120 million in its first five days and ‘only’ grossed $105 million, there was talk that it hadn’t met expectations,” he said. (“Phantom Menace” went on to top $400 million, defying the early perception.) Perceptions can work the other way as well; when “The Mummy’s” opening weekend greatly exceeded expectations, it became an even bigger story in the media.

By early Sunday afternoon, the guess-timates have hit the airwaves, news wires and Internet news services (and major newspapers on Monday morning). By the time the real figures have been released on Monday, most media outlets have moved on (The Times publishes final grosses on Tuesday in both the Calendar and Business sections), lending additional weight to the estimates.

Still, say studio distribution and marketing executives, the industry has a fairly good track record for accuracy given that the Sunday estimates are based on 80% of the Friday and Saturday receipts and a guess as to Sunday’s business, according to Jeff Blake, head of distribution for Sony Pictures.

Until a decade ago, studios only released final figures on Monday. But in the era of the blockbuster, the ante has been upped--reporting on the Sunday estimates began in 1989 with Warner Bros.’ release of the original “Batman”--and media sources have become increasingly hungrier for box-office numbers.

At present some media sources are actually projecting weekend grosses as early as Thursday and Friday. Others are publishing complete weekend estimates on Saturday based solely on Friday night estimates.

At first the studios balked at releasing their figures on Sunday. When they finally capitulated, they decided to turn a minus into a plus, by turning the projections into yet another publicity tool for a hit movie. While some of the more glaring abuses of the past few years have subsided, say studio executives--mainly because of industry self-monitoring--there are still some noticeable discrepancies between the estimates and the final tallies. And studios are reticent to point the finger on any given weekend, knowing they might be in the hot seat the following weekend.

“There are so many variables on which you can base the Sunday numbers, if it’s a holiday, non-holiday, if the movie has strong ethnic appeal, its playability,” says Rob Friedman, senior executive at Paramount Pictures. “So it’s hard to be obviously spot on.” And, he admits, “everyone wants their film to be seen in the most favorable light.”

Because many television news shows only show the top three or top five films, studios sometimes scramble to make sure a new release makes the cut. Since the number is only an estimate, if a little padding can move a film into a better position in the rankings, there’s nothing to prevent a particular studio from doing so and then revising the number (usually downward) the following day.

While studios use the “estimate” excuse to account for these discrepancies, they are often being disingenuous, says one studio executive. “We all know within $100,000 what the other guy’s business was for the weekend,” says the executive. Yet, when reporting their own figures, a particular studio allows itself a much wider margin of error.

It sounds like a double standard. But there are other factors in the precise reporting of the gross estimates.

“This is where dealing with ‘personalities’ comes into play,” says Tom Sherak, senior executive at 20th Century Fox. Studio distribution and marketing executives say they are often pressured, by powerful producers and sometimes even senior management, to report a higher number on Sunday--usually on the opening weekend of a film. All the distribution executives interviewed for this story admit they have, at one time or another, been leaned on.

But they all claim they have never caved in to this pressure, though they say their competitors certainly have.

“As with everything else in this business, it’s all about perception,” says the marketing executive.

The estimate game sometimes goes well beyond a film’s Sunday projections. Even Monday “final” figures are sometimes exaggerated, says the marketing executive. Hit films especially are prone to longtime numbers tinkering. “You’ll notice that some studios never have a picture that grosses $90 million,” says the executive. “It’s either $80 million or $100 million.” This practice is known as “pushing” the gross, says the executive. It’s done gradually, over a number of weeks.

The reason is often “bragging rights,” so a studio can claim to have a higher market share at the end of the year than its competitors, or more $100-million grossing films. Another reason is that there are certain “magic” numbers like $100 million when bonuses and other sales incentives (future video orders and television payments) kick in.

Even though most studios are public companies, this deception is often hard to spot because other figures, such as foreign grosses, are rolled into the equation. About the only positive step that has been made toward accountability is by Universal Pictures, which recently started a Web site to go “on the record” with the final grosses on its films.

“It behooves all of us in the industry to move toward a more precise record [of film grosses],” says Shmuger. “Right now figures are being reported from 20 different directions and that creates chaos. Hopefully this will create a greater record of accuracy.”

Other studios are maintaining a “wait and see” attitude before deciding whether to follow suit.