I'm not creating this thread because of Superman, although it did precipitate the idea as per the article in imdb about rival studios claiming that WB increase the numbers to make it look better, but I am creating it more for your input and my curiosity.

Why couldn't a studio just say that they made X amount of money on said day. Do rival studios get their numbers also. How are the numbers tracked? Do theaters just forward their sales to the studios and that is how they add them up? Does anyone know how the data is collected and why would it be accurate?

Is there a watchdog to keep studios honest? I'd like answers dammit!! And yes, I CAN HANDLE THE TRUTH.

So I take it no one knows. Maybe Brandon knows.

Enron of the film world?

I'm sure there's someone who checks on the numbers. If not, then I'm sure all films would look like they did a lot better than they seem, even bombs like Poseidon, The Island, etc.

Since when do theaters send gross reports directly to the studios? We send ours to ETS or EST or whatever the hell the acronym is for tabulation. It was my understanding that, once collected, firms like that developed the estimates and passed the rest of the work on to the studio for detailed calculation.

Nielsen EDI http://www.entdata.com/ is the official tracking firm and rival studios keep track of all films' grosses I do believe, to keep the studios honest.

Yep, So i dont know why baumer has doubts about Superman Return's number.

Yeah, but if that was the case, Fox would not be able to influence all the Omen numbers with "666" and such...

Like I said, this is more for my personal knowledge and has very little to do with Superman. I have wondered this about plenty of movies before hand. So it is not just about Supes.

So this is an independent firm that tracks the numbers? So they get their info from EST or whatver that company is? And then they release the numbers?

Studios probably mess with the little details to make the number look better, though. If your estimate comes in just $2,000 under a record, I think you'll fudge it just a little and push it right over. Or, with Fox, the "666" stuff.

I have also seen numbers where days after they were reported, then said day goes down by a few percentage points, way after it was reported.

I was talking about nielsen, the 666 didnt appear with nielsen.

some people do not beleive Spiderman got 114 million dollars on its weekend.

Yeah, I think studios are free to mess with the last three digits for fun because they are so insignificant, but anything bigger than that would cause rivals to call foul.

But how do you prove that?

The way I have always looked at it is, the easiest way to do hte numbers, in the era of computers, is at the end of business for that night, all the sales is sent to the firm that tracks, they then add up all the sales from the 6000 or so theaters that send in their data. Then you add the tally and get the number. It sounds veyf arcane, but is the only way to be sure.

you cant. you just go by numbers simple as that

but that creates problems.

Like what?

I think studios do it all the time.

For instance, Disney clearly gave Narnia an extra 100 million dollars in gross from thin air, cause there is no WAY that movie made over 200 million.

It's disgusting, really.

If there is no independent arbitrator to monitor the grosses, then studios could claim any number for the grosses. There has to be some kind of indy firm that has no affiliation with anyone to get the numbes correct.

I guess most of you never took an Economy Class??
Yeah sure fair competition and telling the others your real buisness numbers...
nonononono...Not in that world.
And its also tactic to be honest and to let a bomb be a bomb.

They certainly do. Proof is in the number of films to open just above and below 20m, 30m, or 10m. You can't know with 100% certainty exactly which movies they do it for, but it happens. They can change it by at least 3%, although more then that is probably more then they want to push it.

I am still very convinced that the numbers for ROTS' opening day were slightly manipulated. I mean, heck, it passed $50 million by $13,000!

Yea, that one is funny. How hard would it be to say you counted the receipts and had 50 mill worth of admissions, and OH HEY!!! look, we came in at 13 grand of 50 mill!