DAJK Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 So, this past weekend, when I tried telling my dad about how big Furious 7 opened, he asked me something that had always been at the back of my mind, but that I had never openly thought about: "Why do you even care about Box Office? It's not like you're making any of the money." So why do I, and any of you, care about what the box office numbers are, or what films have potential to du huge numbers? Why does it excite us when a film earns over a billion dollars worldwide? Why do we freak out (in a good way) when a movie opens to 147M dollars? With Fast 7's example, its not that "yes, good box office numbers = sequel" because we knew there would be a Fast 8 whether Furious 7 opened to 90M or 150M. Why do we spend a lot of our time trying to predict the box office of upcoming films? What is it about these numbers that have no real effect on us, that get us all talking? How do numbers start a community like the BOT Forums? I thought about my dad's question, and never came up with a straight answer. I always have been good at math and numbers, but doing math never excited me, it was just something that I was really really good at. On the other hand, I have always been mildly interested in statistic values; before I got into box office, I was the kid who could tell you the population of every city and town in British Colombia. Then there's the movie aspect: most people enjoy movies. I myself grew up on Star Wars and Harry Potter, but I was never a "movie geek". Now, I go see movies for the experience, I appreciate the art of filmmaking and storytelling. I see movies that I'm not always interested in (and end up being pleasantly surprised). I get excited about box office numbers for movies that I have no desire to ever see (50 Shades for example... how many of you were like "woah" when that think opened to like 240M WW?) So I guess the big question is, why? Let me know what you guys think I don't think there's already a thread for this, but if there is, just let me know. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAR Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 Your dad is right most of us don't benefit from it. But it's a fun aspect of following movies. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethan Hunt Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 You mean I'm the only one who gets a check from each studio at the end of the month 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avatree Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 Why do football fans care about football? None of it affects them. If someone moves teams, and gets sold for a bazillion dollars, the fans don't see any of the money. Why do petrolheads care about fast cars? They'll probably never drive a Lamborghini, so why bother reading about Lamborghinis? Football is simply more popular than box office; that doesn't make it any more worthy of your attention. For a small number of people, box office is fascinating and fun. Me personally, I'm interested in the film industry as a whole, and I've always liked statistics. Following box office is interesting to me, and comparing the trends, writing spreadsheets, seeing how accurate I can predict, is fun. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Tiki Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 (edited) I guess there are movie fans who care about box office for the same reason that there are sports fans who care about team statistics. It may not impact them specifically, but they're interesting to follow in their own way. I personally was a film fan before I was a box office fan, but when I was 16 or so I came to realize that, for better or worse, the creative side was intrinsically tied to the business side. So I began to follow the trades and sites like BOM and started to find it fascinating. I guess it's not really the math aspect that gets me as much as the history aspect: the way studios respond to successes and failures, the genres that are spawned from how well one film can do, how much studios can have riding on certain films, I think it's all very interesting. And it's always changing, so it never gets boring to me. EDIT: treeroy beat me to it and pretty much summed it up. Edited April 9, 2015 by Sir Tiki Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmandeep Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 I really get into numbers and historical analysis. You always see me talking about the past. Also these movies who do really well are important, they become popular and shape modern culture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethan Hunt Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 I don't have a reason other than simply I enjoy it. It was something I saw.the statistics for once in a while on Wikipedia and I had always liked movies but my real interest in it just kinda developed one day the week before Despicable Me 2 came out, and for some reason I was awfully curious about how much it was gonna make in opening weekend. Can't explain why, but I'm happy that I did and that it led me here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmandeep Posted April 8, 2015 Share Posted April 8, 2015 I use it to troll or 'educate' people. Like in 2012, my friend thought TDKR was the biggest film of 2012. I was nah bro, it was beaten By Skyfall and TA. Then my work friend who despises mainstream films... I was like to him on monday, "hey Fast 7 is going to make a billion dollars' He gets angry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAJK Posted April 8, 2015 Author Share Posted April 8, 2015 I use it to troll or 'educate' people. Like in 2012, my friend thought TDKR was the biggest film of 2012. I was nah bro, it was beaten By Skyfall and TA. Then my work friend who despises mainstream films... I was like to him on monday, "hey Fast 7 is going to make a billion dollars' He gets angry. When friends ask, I have used it to tell them whether or not a movie is getting a sequel. A really good friend of mine once asked "are they gonna make a John Carter 2?" I was like :lol: :lol: No. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmandeep Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 (edited) Never debate box office with people in society. Edited April 9, 2015 by Lordmandeep 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avatree Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 Never debate box office with people in society. It's a rare subject where if you don't know much, you really don't know anything. We can laugh at the predictions or statements that some of us make on here, but try having the same arguments with your family or your friends, or even other movie lovers but who aren't too into BO, and you can't even have a conversation. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethan Hunt Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 The look on my friends face when I told him Avatar 2 was the highest grossing film of all time was priceless. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordmandeep Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I showed the guy at work the all time top ten WW films on Monday and he lost faith in Humanity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAJK Posted April 9, 2015 Author Share Posted April 9, 2015 I showed the guy at work the all time top ten WW films on Monday and he lost faith in Humanity. I've had a few people ask me what "the biggest movies of all time were". I skipped the "domestic, worldwide or adjusted?" question and just listed the top 10 WW. With everyone, I got basically the same reaction you did. "Frozen is number 5? Iron Man is that popular? Avatar sucked!" That's why I love BOT so much. You guys are so right when you say that we think some predictions made on here are ridiculous, but in reality, try getting the average person to participate in the summer games (for example). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PDC1987 Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I love movies, and I'm a number person. Simple as that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walt Disney Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 (edited) The best way to answer the question is to explain why I started following box office in the first place. I used to be pretty oblivious to how Hollywood worked and the different studios. I knew some of the Disney animated movies were made by Disney along with Mary Poppins, but that was about it. I saw lots of movies and was a huge fan of movies, but I didn't know much about which studios made which films. Also, I was a fan of Marvel superheroes. However, the films about the Marvel characters (which I mistakenly thought Marvel made because I didn't know much about movie studios and saw the Marvel flip logo at the beginning of the films) mostly weren't good to me. I was disappointed by most of them; Unlike The Dark Knight, which was great. I was pretty much done with Marvel superhero movies. Then, 2 events happened that pulled me back in. I went to Disney Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World in 2011. I was a grown man, but I had never been to that theme park before. I saw the exhibit on Walt Disney and I became blown away at the history of Disney. I came back a huge Disney fan. Then, I saw Thor in the movie theater and it was a very good movie, and I was trying to understand why Thor was so much better than a lot of the previous Marvel superhero films. Then, I started researching Marvel films. I learned all about the rights to different Marvel characters and different movie studios. I also learned that Marvel was owned by Disney. Then, I saw Iron Man 2 on cable and absolutely loved it. I was completely hooked on Disney. Disney had this incredible history and they owned Marvel, so I became a massive Disney fan. I started trying to learn more about Disney and its movies. I learned that Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures were Disney labels. I also read a game changing fact: there were only 6 major studios that dominated the movie business. I couldn't believe that most of the big movies belonged to only 6 studios. I was curious how Disney's movies compared to other studios when it came to popularity. At this time, I was anticipating Captain America: The First Avenger. I saw it in the movie theater and absolutely loved it. Then, I discovered Box Office Mojo. This website was able to adjust movies for inflation and rank them by their domestic box office results. I became a huge fan of Box office Mojo's top 200 domestic adjusted grossing movies list. I was very interested in seeing how many movies Disney had on the list and how it compared to other studios. I was also now starting to become a little bit ahead of the curve because I knew an Avengers movie was being made. I really wanted to see if The Avengers made Box office Mojo's all-time inflation adjusted list. I started looking around for news on the movie and that's when I found this board (technically BO.com's board at the time). I didn't post, but rather followed The Avengers thread and watched this site tear the idea of the movie to shreds. It was like a horror scene. The people were so smug and cocky. Then, you had like a handful of guys standing up to them...guys like BKB and Maverick. I wanted to see the smugness wiped off of most of their faces. I followed this site very closely TA's opening weekend. It was the first movie that I really tracked its BO, and the BO run was legendary. It was such an amazing result that I stuck around and actually started participating here. So to answer the question about why I care about BO: because I care about the history of Hollywood and I want to see how Disney's movies continue to rank compared to other studios' blockbusters at the BO. I want to see how successful movies rank against all the films that came before them. I realize that BO is a more interesting way to rank movies as opposed to my own subjective opinion or the opinions of others. Most importantly, I follow BO because I am a big Disney fan (heck they bought LucasFilm during the time I was here) and it's fun to see which films by which studio are coming out on top at the BO. BO is just a fun thing to follow and an interesting way to rank movies. Edited April 9, 2015 by Walt Disney 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MovieGuyKyle17 Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 Well, it actually started in like 3rd or 4th grade. Every Monday, the newspaper would have a small article on how the movies did over the weekends. The radio guy would actually do full weekend box office reports during music breaks. So I was always interested in box office numbers for awhile. I was always interested how movies that I liked, performed at the box office. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DAJK Posted April 9, 2015 Author Share Posted April 9, 2015 That is a fantastic response Walt Disney. Explaining the circumstances of how you got into box office really does show why you love it P.S I was also at Disney's Hollywood Studios in 2011 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dark Jedi Master 007 Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 I honestly don't care about box office that much anymore. But when I did, it was simply because it was fascinating to track Box Office runs. Someone here brought up "football," and I think that's a good comparison. Tracking a great box office run felt a lot like watching a great football team; it was just amazing to watch the records that were broken, the history that was made, and everyone's reaction to it. I sort of lost interest over time in Box Office simply because I felt like there were more valuable elements to the movie-going experience than tracking box office runs (obviously this is my opinion, and I'm not trying to argue that others can't find value in it). However, I still come here because I like the community. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grey ghost Posted April 9, 2015 Share Posted April 9, 2015 It's sports for movie nerds. The actors are the athletes. The directors are the coaches. The studios are the managers. and there's a playoff game every weekend. But instead of chasing around a ball, art is created and celluloid dreams become a shared experience. These shared experiences battle for supremacy in a free market of imagination. It's fucking beautiful. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
