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Why Does Hollywood Care About Box Office Opening Weekends?


The entertainment industry cares a lot about a film’s box office debut. Some people question whether it should.

Sony’s rom-com “Anyone but You,” Pixar’s “Elemental” and Illumination’s “Migration” are recent examples of movies that didn’t have splashy debuts but kept selling tickets for weeks thanks to word of mouth. Although films begin as creative endeavors, Gross continues, “the movie business is just that — a business.” Paramount spent $110 million to produce “IF” — a significant portion of which went to the voice cast of Steve Carell, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Bradley Cooper and George Clooney. Newer players like Netflix and Amazon Prime tout baseless viewership metrics for titles they deem a hit and avoid scrutiny of underperforming streaming-first movies by never revealing the data.

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