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TL;DR Two filmakers paid $25,488 to buy all seats for 5 screenings of their $0 production budget movie at a local movie theater on June 10th. Which turned out

by flak48 6y ago

TL;DR Two filmakers paid $25,488 to buy all seats for 5 screenings of their $0 production budget movie at a local movie theater on June 10th. Which turned out to be more money 'earned' than any other movie in the US that day, allowing them to top the charts as the highest grossing movie. Edit: whoops, looks like I may have misunderstood and they probably didn't pay that much, as replies to this comment are pointing out

heavyset_go 6y ago
Looks like they lost the long-tail opportunity to sell their "One Weird Trick That Movie Critics Hate and Will Make You Rich"
shaftway 6y ago
Did it cost them that much? I think it wasn't clear on that point. It looks like they rented the theater out for a fixed fee (since they have connections to the theater let's say it was $100). Then they can sell tickets and they get to keep the money for selling said tickets. So they sell tickets to themselves for $25,488. According to the theater that's the profit for the movie, and they're only out of pocket $100. I suspect the $25,488 was so low to keep it believeable.
- geoelectric 6y ago
  either that, or the "ticket revenue" from selling out a full theater was ~$5100. Average theater seats about 2-300 people, so ~$20 a ticket (not sure of the per-ticket price, but it was the premiere after all) works out at 250 seats.
nordsieck 6y ago
> Two filmakers paid $25,488 to buy all seats for 5 screenings of their $0 production budget movie The film studio usually gets the majority of the ticket sales for a movie, so even if they didn't have connections it would cost them much less than a normal person to rent out the theater. > Arrangements vary, but the movie studio usually ends up with about 60 percent of the proceeds from American box offices. > ... > That figure varies according to the usual supply and demand principles — an extremely hot first-run movie may start out with distribution fees up to 90 percent (in other words, 90 percent of the fees during that time are going back to the studio). As the film stays in distribution longer, the fees go down since demand goes down until eventually the theater replaces it with a different film. https://theweek.com/articles/647394/when-buy-movie-ticket-where-does-that-money https://theweek.com/articles/647394/when-buy-movie-ticket-wh... Given that the theaters were completely empty at the time, I'm sure they could have negotiated some pretty good rates.

by flak48 6y ago

heavyset_go 6y ago

Looks like they lost the long-tail opportunity to sell their "One Weird Trick That Movie Critics Hate and Will Make You Rich"

shaftway 6y ago

Did it cost them that much? I think it wasn't clear on that point. It looks like they rented the theater out for a fixed fee (since they have connections to the theater let's say it was $100). Then they can sell tickets and they get to keep the money for selling said tickets. So they sell tickets to themselves for $25,488. According to the theater that's the profit for the movie, and they're only out of pocket $100. I suspect the $25,488 was so low to keep it believeable.

geoelectric 6y ago
either that, or the "ticket revenue" from selling out a full theater was ~$5100. Average theater seats about 2-300 people, so ~$20 a ticket (not sure of the per-ticket price, but it was the premiere after all) works out at 250 seats.

nordsieck 6y ago

> Two filmakers paid $25,488 to buy all seats for 5 screenings of their $0 production budget movie The film studio usually gets the majority of the ticket sales for a movie, so even if they didn't have connections it would cost them much less than a normal person to rent out the theater. > Arrangements vary, but the movie studio usually ends up with about 60 percent of the proceeds from American box offices. > ... > That figure varies according to the usual supply and demand principles — an extremely hot first-run movie may start out with distribution fees up to 90 percent (in other words, 90 percent of the fees during that time are going back to the studio). As the film stays in distribution longer, the fees go down since demand goes down until eventually the theater replaces it with a different film. https://theweek.com/articles/647394/when-buy-movie-ticket-where-does-that-money https://theweek.com/articles/647394/when-buy-movie-ticket-wh... Given that the theaters were completely empty at the time, I'm sure they could have negotiated some pretty good rates.