I am not a film maker in any way. So then why do so many news sites tell me about how much money the film has taken in during its first weekend, week, etc…?
As a film fan / viewer, why should I care?
Any sort of historical explanation would be very appreciated.
Keep in mind that there’s such a thing as “Hollywood Accounting”. Studios will claim big box office, and then turn around and tell the IRS and stakeholders that their pictures never made money.
It’s just a metric for success and popularity.
I think it’s even worse: If I’m curios and buy a ticket yet absolutely hate the film after seeing it, i still paid a ticket. So Ticket sales are absolutely unrelated to the quality of the movie.
I also just started to realize how out of touch most critics are with regular viewers (or me at least). Some films on IMDB have horrible critics reviews yet the user reviews are almost always higher or even quite decent.
Once upon a time, the theatre was the only place to watch a film.
So, the box office takings were the only income and sole measure of the success of a film.
That metric has hung around, but the modes of film consumption have expanded.
I want to add that the box office income is simply one of the only objective metrics to compare the success of films.
Because people think mo money = mo good… its core ideology of capitalism.
If these movies did not make money, they would not get made. Maybe other types of movies would get made, and maybe they’d be better, but the big budget movies that do get made are to make money.