Alphagaia wrote: Hmm, it sorta makes sense, but do we know what the startof split is for any these movies? I thought it was 50/50 and becoming more in the favor of the cinemas as the weeks progessed? In short, BvsS still only got 50% of the BO? Do we have any proof of how this exactly works?
Every movie is different, they make individual deals for every movie, taking into account projections of how much of a crowd they'll bring (a big crowd means cinemas make a lot of money from the Candy Bar. A smaller movie not so much), how many screens and it will show on and how much staff a cinema will need to employ to show it etc. Only the cinemas and studios know for sure.
I remember reading that with The Phantom Menace 100% of every ticket in the first week went back to the studio/distributor which they could get away with because they knew cinemas could clean up on Candy Bar sales from the massive crowd the movie was going to bring in. That kind of thing stopped happening with the Global Financial Crisis though because people stopped spending as much on a night at the cinema. So now for a typical big release (ie, a Marvel film) for the first two weeks the studio will take 75% of the gross. After that the cinema will take a bigger cut (which is also to encourage cinemas to keep playing a movie for as long as possible) and generally it will average out to about 50/50 overall. This is why studios are so heavily promoting midnight releases these days, they want as many people to see the film in the first week when they make the most money.
Comedies and dramas are a different thing, unlike the likes of the Superhero movies or Star Wars, they dont generally bring in big crowds or have huge opening weeks, but they dont usually have big week to week drops either, they kind of maintain a level audience for a lot longer. So the studio would make a different deal with them. Maybe 50/50 the whole way.
With Batman v Superman I very much doubt it was a 50/50 split, because the movie made practically all its money when the studio was taking the biggest cut. The movie was dead after two weeks so by the time the cinema was taking a bigger proportion it didnt make much difference.
Do we have any proof of how this exactly works?
Im just going from my own experience (I was assistant manager of a cinema back in the early 2000's) and as a movie nerd I took an interest in this stuff at the time, but if you google Box Office Economics theres a few more in depth articles out there.
Didn't most movies have a 80-% drop off anyway according to RLM after the first week?
Nah, the average for a blockbuster is about 60-65%% for its second weekend. This is what you see most of the Marvel films and other big hits doing. Smaller movies like comedies and dramas its more like 40%-50%. The big movies have bigger drops because more people see them on the opening weekend and go to midnight releases. Batman vs Superman's 80% drop was pretty unprecedented. Much of that was because it opened so massively, but then the bad reviews and WoM killed it on the second week.