By Lorenza Muñoz
Times Staff
Writer
Saturday June 21 2003
There was a time when nobody but the topmost
studio executives and nerdy number crunchers in back offices knew — or cared —
about a movie's opening-weekend grosses. Today, it is an American
pastime.
When Arthur D. Murphy, the dean of box office reporting, died
Monday, he left a legacy that has exploded far beyond anything he anticipated or
wanted.
He was the first to analyze and research studio box office
grosses when he worked as a writer for the entertainment trade newspaper
Variety. Based on extensive calculation, Murphy created economic indicators and
began writing the monthly Variety Box Office Index as a measure of film
performance.
But not unlike Dr. Frankenstein's creation, Murphy's
meticulous analysis of hard numbers has mutated into a wild-horse-race story.
More than a source of reliable information, box office grosses are now used as a
marketing tool for studios to pump up their movies.
"I think Art would
have said he was proud of what he did and it's too bad that the unwashed masses
have corrupted it," said Phil Barlow, former head of distribution for Disney,
who knew Murphy for decades.
A movie's first weekend today is seen as
fueling the domestic box office, the international market and the movie's
ancillary life on TV and in home video formats. The premiere weekend is also
often key to determining whether a movie can be launched into a franchise — not
only with sequels, but also with video games, toys and other
merchandise.
However, on average, domestic box office accounts for about
40% of the theatrical pie, while the international market brings in the rest. In
addition, domestic theatrical box office fuels ancillary markets such as home
video, which now accounts for the majority of movie revenue."When Art was doing
it, domestic was the bigger piece of the pie," said Tom Sherak, a partner at
Revolution Studios, who knew Murphy well. "This country is still the engine that
drives the box office. International is very important now, but publicity-wise,
when you read about something here, good or bad, it has more of an effect than
if you read that it did well in the U.K. or France."
Still, many
including Sherak now argue that box office reporting has become a mutant form of
what Murphy practiced.
"The public has this association to a winner and
so if it's No. 1, it also becomes a sales tool," said Bruce Snyder, head of
domestic distribution for 20th Century Fox.
The nature of box office
reporting, as Murphy had done it, began to change in 1989 with the release of
"Batman," which grossed a then-unprecedented $40 million during its June opening
weekend. Variety published a story based on Sunday estimates, and periodically
through what turned out to be a record summer for the industry.
But
reporting box office based on Sunday estimates did not become a habit until
March 30, 1990.
Former Variety reporter Joseph McBride, who had been
mentored by Murphy, was watching the surprising Friday and Saturday business of
"Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
"I saw an amazingly long line of kids and
parents on Saturday," he said. "I had reviewed it and was sure that it would be
a hit. I called Murf because I knew he would have figures. He said it was an
amazing $25-million opening weekend, roughly, and that is what it turned out to
be. It doesn't sound like a lot now, but back then it was a big opening. So I
thought, 'This is news.' "
McBride's story ran on Monday with a banner
headline trumpeting the surprise hit. As a result, New Line received several
hundred media inquiries that day.
McBride remembers thinking that if he
pushed the studios to give him estimates on Sunday, it would deter inflation of
official numbers on Monday.
"Everybody in the business knew how films
were doing on Friday, so why wait until Tuesday?" said McBride, who has since
written several biographies, including one of director Frank Capra.
"It
was harder for them to pad the figures on Monday if the estimates had already
been reported and if they were really accurate. I felt part of my job was to
keep them honest."
But many studio executives thought reporting the
figures on Sunday for publication Monday was simply a bad idea.
"At first
I refused," said Phil Barlow, who was then Disney's head of distribution. "But
then we decided that it was a fait accompli....
"The runs were now
coming in wider and wider and we were having a more difficult time getting
accurate numbers. We were going to have to totally estimate Sunday numbers. Our
concern was accuracy, because we had an absolute mandate from the corporation to
be accurate with our grosses."
Added Sherak: "I was given no choice. We
had to do it."
Murphy also thought it was a bad idea.
"He thought
it was jumping the gun," McBride said. "And in retrospect, I have to say I
wonder if this was a good idea. [It] kind of started a monster."
The
problem is that the numbers a studio reports on Sunday mornings are only
estimates. The studios take their Friday and Saturday figures, plug in a formula
for Sunday and report that as their weekend estimate.
"I think doing the
numbers on Sunday morning is insane," said Snyder, a veteran of the distribution
side of the industry. "There is too much guesswork." Added Sherak, referring to
some news media, "They are reporting estimates like they are the real
thing."
Reporting numbers on Sunday also increased the heated competition
among studios.
"Immediately disputes started among the different
companies," Barlow said. "People started understanding that those grosses would
be on the Sunday-night news. Then the wire services were picking it up and then
The Times. Now it became a situation where, for too many companies, the
temptation was quite significant to fudge a little bit, and then there was the
perfect excuse because these were estimates."
It wasn't always this
way.
Dan Fellman, head of distribution at Warner Bros., who started in
the business in 1964, recalls when the numbers were the private domain of studio
bosses and accountants. Before cell phones, computers or hordes of reporters
covering entertainment, there was no urgency to reporting the weekend box
office.
"Back then, we had these guys sitting in a back room — wearing
green shades and rubber fingertips," Fellman recalled. "They were human
calculators who would put all the grosses in and tally them into one big number.
[Then they would] make copies and bring them to the executives themselves and
drop it on your desk by noon" Monday.
Now entire companies and Web sites
are dedicated to compiling grosses ranging from Nielsen EDI to Exhibitor
Relations to boxofficemojo.com, boxofficeguru.com and boxofficeprophets.com.
Although it may appear these companies are independent entities, they are
not.
All receive the numbers from the studios. Some are even paid by the
studios to collect the data.
"The whole thing has become standardized and
people report the estimates as if they are hard figures. They don't even bother
reporting the actual figures," lamented McBride, now an assistant professor at
San Francisco State's cinema school.
The Times publishes a Monday story
based on Sunday estimates, then on Tuesday publishes a chart of the actual
figures for the weekend. Significant discrepancies are pointed out in
text.
The obsession with the box office has also hurt smaller, adult
movies which may not make into the weekend's top five.
"Murf pointed this
out to me: All the public cares about are the top five films. And so what
happens is a herd effect that people feel they should only go to the biggies and
the movies at the top of the list," McBride said.
"He argued with me for
a few months. He didn't like it at all." But now, McBride conceded, "the cat's
out of the bag."
© Copyright 2003 Los Angeles Times