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January 03, 2008

How Does The Math Work?

I'm not even saying it's wrong in principle... but Variety reports:

"Among studio specialty arms, total box office receipts for 2007 were down 4% from 2006, according to Rentrak"

"The top 15 specialty unit and indie distribs -- including MGM and the Weinstein Co. -- posted domestic box office receipts of $1.03 billion, down slightly from the $1.04 billion collected in 2006."

Isn't the difference between 1.04 billion and $1.03 billion $10 million... or less than 1%?

According to Variety, here are the studio Dependents' results:

Focus down $53.8 million
Searchlight down $25.5 million
Sony Classics down $21.9 million
WIP down $11.8 million
4 Dependents Down $113 million

Miramax up $79.2 million
Vantage up $14 million
Picturehouse up $34.3 million
3 Dependents Up $127.5 million

So where is the overall downturn? Must be the true indies, right?

Well, films released by Lionsgate in 2007 did $368,137,389... and 2006 releases grossed just $282,887,640... up $83.2 million. And though the math in Variety's report comes from film grosses in the year and not holding over into the next year, Lionsgate happens to have not released a film after October in either year... so all of their films were closed for that year before year end.

This is not true of MGM , which is down this year ($55.6 million) from last year's $102.9 million, about $20 million of which came from Rocky Balboa in 2007. So actually, by Variety's count, the down is only about $37 million.

And way up, which for some reason goes 100% unmentioned by Variety's story, is The Weinstein Co, releasing though MGM, with $111.7m in 2006 and $249.3m in 2007. TWC on its own is about even. And Dimension is down about $85.5 million (from $111m to 2007's $25.5m). Overall, that suggest The Weinsteins are up about $50 million this year. (This conversation is not about profitability, which is a completely different issue for many of these companies.)

So... I'm still up about $110 million by my count... maybe adjusting for holdovers by, what, $20 million max?

I have to be missing something profound, right?

Posted by poland at January 3, 2008 12:04 PM

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Posted by: a1amoeba at January 3, 2008 03:08 PM

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