September 12th, 2011
Dustin Rowles poses a really interesting question about the movie Creature, which this weekend set the record for smallest per-theater gross of a film opening on at least 1,500 screens. Rowles asks the following: How does a movie with no budget, no stars, no critical momentum, no festival pedigree, no marketing, and, most important, no studio distribution, get onto 1,500 screens today?
I don’t have an answer. But I’d love to get Edward Jay Epstein on the case.
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Taking a wild stab, I’d guess that there’s a clause somewhere in the contract (probably related to tax-rebate incentives) that said the film had to open on at least 1,500 screens. How did they manage that feat? I’m guessing they told theaters they could keep the lion’s share (90%?) of box office grosses instead of splitting them with the studio.
Wild speculation, all of that. But that’s my guess.
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Ha, I also compared this to Idiocracy in my own post. What’s really scary is that it’s three times more screens than Jaws.
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[…] monster film, opened on 1,500 screens with no marketing and made no money whatsoever (h/t Jonathan Last). My initial reaction was (and I apologize if you can’t follow the abstruse technical jargon) […]
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[…] Friend G.R. has a pretty good educated guess in answer to our question from yesterday. Cancel […]
Steve Sailer September 13, 2011 at 7:33 am
That’s an order of magnitude or two more screens than Idiocracy opened on.