Picking the movies each week is an inexact science with many variables. I usually have a good idea how any particular movie will do at Western Film. It's a combination of box office,buzz, reviews, my own impression of the movie and general trends at Western Film.
Western Film has it's own unique trends. The movies we do best with are usually not the huge hits. For example last year our biggest grossing film was Hotel Rwanda which only did about 20 million in the general marketplace. Western Film's biggest grossing film ever is Bowling for Columbine. We brought it back for 4 or 5 weeks. We set a non-Tuesday record of 278 people for one show. It was the first Friday back after Christmas break and it was the late show. I remember it well because I was running the box office. I hadn't expected attendance to be that high so I didn't have any extra staff on, made the three of us that were on scramble quite a bit.
I'm usually right about how I think a movie will do but sometimes I'm wrong, occasionally spectacularly. The biggest example is Moulin Rouge. I didn't really want to book it because I hadn't heard much about it and it was Fox so I couldn't split it. However I didn't have anything else to play that week so I booked it. We did huge business and once I watched it became one of my favorite movies. It was one of the highest grossing movies that year.
Another example is Wimbledon, it didn't do great First Run and I didn't hear a lot of buzz about it. I booked it expecting it to do okay and it ended up being extremely busy.
I can't think of anything I thought would do well and was extremely wrong. There have been disappointments of course. Big movies like Star Wars and King Kong can sometimes perform less than would be expected considering how much they do First Run. The biggest disappointment I can think of is a movie called The Machinist. It was a small movie but was getting a lot of press, I had seen it already and thought it was really interesting. However I booked it and did nowhere near what I had hoped.
On the whole I like to think I know what I'm doing but every so often it's nice to be wrong, (in a good way)
2 comments:
It sounds like some of the big movies that do well in first run theatres may not do so well at Western Film because people have already gone out to see them. I know there are some movies I just can't wait those couple extra weeks to see.
That's pretty much on the money. People can choose between paying more or waiting longer. We stopped playing horror movies for a similar reason. Horror fans went to see the movies first run rather than wait.
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