Let's be accurate on movie attendance
Every Monday morning the Daily Herald and most other news sources in the land run a story about how many millions of dollars were spent over the weekend on movies. We breathlessly wait each week to find out what movies made it to the Top Ten.
It's silly. Who really cares, besides the owners of the movie studios? It's also inaccurate. The movies are ranked by how many dollars were spent on any given film. Wouldn't it make more sense to list the number of people who actually bought tickets rather than what they spent. Does that revenue figure include the sale of popcorn? I'm told popcorn provides more money to theater owners than ticket revenue. Attendance figures for baseball, football and basketball, for instance, are derived from the number of bodies passing through the turnstiles. Not on how much they paid for their tickets.
Star Wars went over the one billion dollar mark in ticket sales this past weekend. Does that figure tell us how many theaters were showing the movie or what the ticket prices were for the movie. Did people pay more for a ticket in Chicago than in Waterloo, Iowa? It beat Avatar to the one billion dollar mark but did Star Wars appear on more screens nationwide than Avatar? Did tickets to Star Wars cost more than they did when Avatar was running in the theaters? I'm sure they did.
I doubt that many people decide on what movie they will see based on how many people saw it over the weekend. I use Dann Gire's movie reviews to make my decision.
It just seems to be one of those meaningless stories that the media runs only because they've always done it. If we really need to know how many people went to the movies over the weekend, let's run a story that includes accurate information.
Tom Petersen
Elgin