Yes, thanks for posting the news, madscntst
And one thing to keep in mind is that's not even with Latin and South America in the mix because the film hasn't even opened there yet.
And, Gerard, actually there is an explanation beyond lower ticket prices for why discount theaters can thrive but the first run theaters may struggle, and it has to do with the way profits are shared between the studios and the theaters. Something that everyone may not realize is that when a film first opens the studio takes the lion's share of what the film makes at the box office. However, over the course of the weeks that a film is in release, the studio's percentage begins to decrease while a theater's percentage increases. By the time in a film's release when it opens in discount theaters, the box office sharing is to a point where even in their first week of play in the discount theaters, the theaters are getting a much bigger percentage of what they take in than the theaters that played the same film did when it first opened. The policy of percentage sharing is how the first run theaters justify charging what they do because they say they need to charge what they do in order to make enough of a profit to stay in business. That and the fact that first run theaters can't always hold onto films long enough for them to become more profitable for them because the studios want their screens to open the next new film. And there's also the real possibility that even if it's further into a film's run and thus they're able to get a larger percentage, the film itself may cease to be profitable for first run theaters because the prices they're charging aren't bringing in enough people that far into the film's run to justify keeping it. High ticket prices cut a lot ways for the first run theaters, and all of that is the reasoning behind those high prices. And though I've never managed a first run theater, and I'm not necessarily defending them, I can see why the reasoning can make some sense. But the bottom line in all this may be that if you want to run a theater, your best bet might be to run a discount one rather than a first run.
30 days 20 hours 30 minutes 48 seconds since the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows has been in release(ET)!!