Sample Book Chapters

Chapter 7 -- Distribution To Theaters

 Chapter extracts in this website amount to 4,000 words distilled from 102,000 in the print book.
    “Marketing to Moviegoers” focuses on the United States and Canada, which for the purposes of theatrical distribution are considered a single territory called the domestic market. Film almost always opens simultaneously in both countries because of a common language (with the exception of French-speaking Quebec providence) and because most of Canada’s 32 million population lives along the border, giving that population access to mass media originated from the United States.
    Films in different genres follow consistent patterns. Films that appeal purely to the teenage and young adult audience, such as horror/slasher movies and gross-out comedies, tend to fade quickly because their fans arrive the first weekend. Dramas for sophisticated audiences and romantic comedies hold steadier over many weeks because their audience reacts slowly to building word-of-mouth from the first wave of moviegoers. Also, the adult audience waits to digest reviews from critics.
    It’s a longstanding rule of thumb in exhibition (theaters) that a week-to-week decline of 40% or more from a constant pool of theaters is deadly for a film, indicating audience interest is evaporating.
    In exhibition parlance, the payment a theater makes to a film distributor for a movie is the film rental. The word “rental” is used because theaters contract for limited rights to the movies they screen. It is customary for the film rental to be based on dividing box office on a percentage basis.
    Nationally over the course of a year, the major studio distributors are thought to receive an average of 54% of the ticket price. Thus, theaters keep the remaining 46%. Independent film distributors, which lack the clout of majors, tend to get rentals of 40-50%. For arthouse theaters that shoulder relative hefty marketing expenses, the film rental can be as low as 35-40%.
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Note: Book passages and tables are updated where appropriate, and some bridge text may be added to smooth transitions in the accompanying excerpt.


U.S. Top Grossing Films of 2006
Rank/Title/(Distributer)/Box Office $ mil./Audience Rating

1 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (Buena Vista) $423.3 PG-13
2 Cars (Buena Vista) $244.1 G
3 X-Men: The Last Stand (Fox) $234.4 PG-13
4 Night at the Museum (Fox) $218.6 PG-13
5 The Da Vinci Code (Sony) $217.5 PG
6 Superman Returns (Warner Bros.) $200.1 PG-13
7 Ice Age: The Meltdown (Fox) $195.3 PG
8 Happy Feet (Warner Bros.) $192.1 PG
9 Casino Royale (Sony) $165.5 PG-13
10 Over the Hedge (Paramount) $155.0 PG
11 The Pursuit of Happyness (Sony) $154.3 PG-13
12 Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Sony) $148.2 PG-13
13 Click (Sony) $137.4 PG-13
14 Mission: Impossible 3 (Paramount) $134.0 PG-13
15 Borat (Fox) $127.9 R
16 The Departed (Warner Bros.) $126.3 R
17 The Devil Wears Prada (Fox) $124.7 PG-13
18 The Break-Up (Universal) $118.8 PG-13
19 Scary Movie 4 (Weinstein) $90.7 PG-13
20 Dreamgirls (Paramount) $88.7 PG-13

Source: MPAA