Fel wrote:
>
> Ok, but the up to 90% is only for the first week of release. 2nd and
> 3rd week are typically around 50% and after that it's more like 80%
> for the cinema. As most of the movies (especially hyped blockbusters)
> are very frontloaded, I would estimate that the studio would get
> around 65% of the movie box office.

I recently read an appeal by one of the cinema chains to go to films in
the second and subsequent weeks.  This would explain such an appeal. 
For a long time the majority of our movie watching has been 2nd and 3rd
week movies.  We've done that to avoid the crowds and the catch the
non-critic street reports of movies.  But we're fans of certain movie
types that we tend to see in the first week.

> However, one should keep in mind that the movie theater is not the
> major revenue stream of a movie.

And the ticket income is not the high profit item for the cinemas
either.  That's why concession stand prices are so high.  There are
times I'd rather pay an extra dollar for the tickets and a dollar less
for the soda and there are times I go to the matinee and don't buy a
soda so there's no optimal point for me on the topic.

> I only have numbers for 2000, but
> then only about 25% of the revenue came from the theater, the
> remaining 75% from DVD (and at that time also VHS) sales and from TV
> rights. (The percentage might have shifted away from to theatre more
> towards home video in the last 10 years).

That tells me that sane studio execs use DVD sales to decide on what to
film.  The fact that we haven't seen a B5 DVD in years tells me that
sanity is rare among studio execs.  That's not exactly news as I've
known that ever since they cancelled ST-TOS when I was a kid.

> So it might well be that a movie needs to have a box office of 3 times
> its production cost to make it in to the black with cinemas alone, but
> the overall business case is different.

Hollywood, known for special effects over plotline, can hardly be
expected to have books without the same principle.
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