Sony Pictures released Spider-Man III in America this weekend. You do not need me to tell you this. Box Office Mojo has crunched the numbers, and it’s mighty impressive; as much for the way Sony handled it as for the acheivement itself. To quote:

Spider-Man 3 spun an estimated $148 million $153 million on over 10,000 screens at 4,252 locations, the biggest opening weekend and widest release ever. The litany includes all-time daily grosses for its $59.3 million Friday, $51 million Saturday and a projected $37.7 million Sunday, fastest to $100 million and the mightiest IMAX debut: an estimated $4.8 million at 84 sites (included in the weekend total), topping 300’s $3.6 million.

I’ve said before that handling success is a treacherous and delicate business. Actually I didn’t ever use that phrase before, but it’s good and I wish I had. Point is you have to keep a close eye on the per-screen averages with big movies. If you’re on too few screens, they all sell out. This is great for the theatres, which love sold out houses, but terrible for the studio because people want to buy the product but they can’t. Maybe they’ll come back next week, but maybe they’ll see the blockbuster that opens then instead.

On the other thand, if you open too big then you’ve spent a lot on prints for nothing, not to mention calling in a bunch of favors to get the movie on more screens than you needed. Not cool man!

So to open on a record number of screens for ANYTHING is a gamble, and I hope whoever made the decision is rewarded with extra PS2s or hookers or whatever they’re giving out to good executives at Sony these days.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 8th, 2007 at 1:56 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.