Box office
The projection and analysis of these earnings is greatly important for the creative industries and often a source of interest for fans.
There is disagreement, however, around whether the term originates from this time, as the objects could have been carried by the many snack-sellers attending the audiences; they too needed a convenient and secure way to collect their customers' cash.
[8] For films released in North America, box office figures are usually divided between domestic, meaning the United States and Canada, and foreign which includes all other countries.
Historically, this was reported as the box office receipts around Friday through Sunday plus any public holidays close to the weekend, such as a 4-day Memorial Day weekend, however, with the increased regularity of reporting of box office figures, a comparable 3-day figure for the Friday to Sunday is now also used.
There are numerous websites that monitor box-office receipts, such as BoxOffice, Box Office Mojo, The Numbers, and ShowBIZ Data.
Data for older movies is often incomplete due to the way box office reporting evolved, especially in the U.S., and the availability of information prior to the introduction of the internet.
[11] In 1929, the first issue of The Motion Picture Almanac was released and included a list of the top 104 grossing films for the past year.
[14] Beginning in the 1930s, BoxOffice magazine published a Barometer issue in January, which reported the performance of movies for the year expressed as percentages.
[19] Variety would publish an updated all-time list annually for over 50 years, normally in their anniversary edition each January.
In the late 1960s, Variety used an IBM 360 computer to collate the grosses from their weekly reports of 22 to 24 U.S. cities from January 1, 1968.
The data came from up to 800 theatres which represented around 5% of the U.S. cinema population at the time but around one-third of the total U.S. box office grosses.
[24] In 1974, Nat Fellman founded Exhibitor Relations Co., the first company set up to track box office grosses, which it collected from the studios.
Arthur D. Murphy, a former U.S. Navy lieutenant at Variety was one of the first to organize and chart that information and report it in a meaningful form.
Gradually the focus of a film's performance became its box office gross rather than the rentals that Variety continued to report annually.
In 1987, EDI set up a database of box office information which included data on certain films back to 1970.
[25] In 1994, Variety published their first annual global box office chart showing the top 100 grossing films internationally for the prior year.
[36] In December 2009, Rentrak acquired Nielsen EDI for $15 million, and became the sole provider of worldwide box office ticket sales revenue and attendance information which is used by many of the websites noted above.
[39] US box office reporting largely paused for the first time in 26 years in March 2020, as nearly all theaters nationwide were closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
"[42] Box-office figures are reported in the form of either gross receipts or distributor rentals, the latter being especially true of older films.
[107] As of 1997[update], rental fees varied greatly, depending on a number of factors, with films from the major studios averaging 43% of gross receipts.
