June 27, 2004
Are you afraid of making money? (a.k.a. Frodo & Me).
By Jim Dallas
Byron has already touched on Fahrenheit 9/11, but I'd like to reveal a startling statistic that I believe he did not touch on -- the average gross per theater for F9/11 was just a hair over $25,000 ($25,110 to be exact).
On a per-theater basis, F9/11 is more profitable than the following films were on their opening weekends:
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (3,855 theaters, average of $24,302).
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (3,703 theaters, average of $19,613).
- Finding Nemo (3,374 theaters, average of $20,821).
On an average basis, Spider-Man (the film with the largest opening-weekend gross ever) pulled in about $30,000 per theater. It's also a tad behind Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, for which whole church congregations were bused in. Other films with almost-identical per-theater averages include The Matrix Reloaded ($25,471) and Star Wars: Episode II ($25,317).
Now a question - if Michael Moore is reelin' them in at a faster clip than J.K. Rowling and J.R.R. Tolkien, and packin' em in at about the same clip as the Wachowskis and George Lucas - why is F9/11 only on 868 screens? Are America's theater owners afraid of making money or something?
Posted by Jim Dallas at June 27, 2004 10:17 PM
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Those numbers make me wonder why theaters like the Cinemax chain didn't see fit to carry Fahrenheit 9/11 in suburban Detroit theaters near me. Wonder if the good old Harris County Republican Party made some intimidating and /or threatening phone calls to Cinemax management? Nah, surely good patriotic Republicans, who love democracy so much they go to war to spread it around the world, wouldn't stoop so low as to try to censor legitimate political discourse, would they?
The wild success of F-9/11 makes it more likely that theater owners will put business ahead of politics in the future.
why is F9/11 only on 868 screens? Are America's theater owners afraid of making money or something?
No, but they may well be afraid of civil disorder, which some rightwing nutjobs have been threatening. The AMC 30 in Mesquite was concerned enough to bring in extra police for security.
Of course, to be fair, you can't assume F911 would have pulled in $25K per theater if it had been on four times as many of them. It's hard to tell how many more people would've come out, but I doubt it would've been fourfold as many.
Still, it was an excellent movie. Every undecided voter, and especially every voter who dislikes Bush but doesn't think it's worth the trouble to vote, should see it. For that matter, so should every swing-state voter who's considering throwing their vote away on a protest candidate like Nader. Michael Moore not only presents a damning case against Bush, he shows why it matters that Bush is removed in Nov.
I think it would be great if efforts were made in numerous swing states to get everyone out to see it.
Maybe a bunch of us could get together in red states and blue states and each donate the $8 for a person in a swing state to see it. Then, we could buy out showings and let people who either bring their registration card or register to vote, see it for free. I suppose free showings even without registration would be a huge boon to the effort to defeat W again.
