About Movie Box Office Tracking and Terms

Box Office Mojo publishes several sections reporting box office receipts by time period, including Daily, Weekend, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Seasonal, Yearly and All Time.

KEY TERMINOLOGY
Box office tracking refers to theatrical box office earnings. Additional sources of revenue, such as home entertainment sales and rentals, television rights, product placement fees, etc. are not included. All grosses published reflect domestic earnings, i.e., United States and Canada, unless otherwise noted.

Theaters refers to the number of locations where a movie is playing, but it does not reflect the number of screens. One theater location, for example, may play a movie on several screens�this is a necessary distinction since print and Web references routinely and mistakenly refer to theaters as screens.

Box Office Mojo considers a movie in Wide Release or about to go Wide when it is playing at 600 or more theaters, which generally indicates a nationwide release (the term is short for "nationwide"). A movie is considered to be in Limited release when playing at less than 600 theaters, i.e., released in one or more markets but not nationwide.

Production Budget refers to the cost to make the movie and it does not include marketing or other expenditures.

Gross refers to gross earnings in U.S. dollars. On average, the movie's distributor receives a little more than half of the final gross (often referred to as the "rentals") with the remainder going to the exhibitor (i.e., movie theater). The money split varies from movie to movie, but, generally, the contract favors the distributor in early weeks and shifts to the exhibitor later on.

For information on adjusting box office figures for Ticket Price Inflation or for estimated number of tickets sold, see our page: Adjusting for Ticket Price Inflation.

The Daily, Weekend and Weekly box office sections display actual box office receipts during the specified time period.

The Monthly, Quarterly, Seasonal and Yearly sections, movies may be viewed either by their release date or by their Calendar Gross. Viewing by release date shows total box office earnings grouped by their release date, regardless of when the money was made. Calendar Grosses show box office earnings for a given time period, regardless of when the movies were released in theaters.

Calendar Grosses are based on daily box office receipts or, when daily data is not available, estimates are used and are based on weekend and weekly data and historical box office trends. In cases where a final reported gross is different from its last reported gross for a given movie, the difference is assigned to the two weeks after the last reported gross date. In most cases, this reflects receipts that have trickled in after a movie has stopped being tracked for reportage. Since box office has been more closely tracked in recent years, the calendar gross data is generally considered more comprehensive after 2001, while pre-2001 estimates are considered approximate. Accuracy of calendar grosses improves over a wider range of time viewed.

PREMIER PASS FEATURES
Premier Pass members can sort any chart by column header, adjust any chart for ticket price inflation and may have access to additional charts and data in the daily, weekend, weekly, yearly and all time sections. Monthly, Quarterly and Seasonal box office sections are available exclusively to Premier Pass members.

DAILY BOX OFFICE
Daily box office charts show gross receipts for a single day and are generally reported for the previous day by noon Pacific Time. Some movies are not officially tracked on a daily basis, so Box Office Mojo makes estimates for those titles to fill out the top twelve. These estimates are marked as such on the chart. If daily reporting stops for a given movie it does not necessarily mean the movie is no longer playing in theaters, and the movie may continue to be tracked on a Weekend and Weekly basis.

Readers can view the daily box office index for the past 14 days as well as a calendar view to easily jump to a given day. Historical charts are available from 2002 to the present, and an alphabetical index by title is available for all movies with daily box office grosses reported (including numerous pre-2002 movies). Premier Pass members have full access to our daily index, including breakdowns by month, season, quarter, year and can filter out specific days of the week (i.e., view all Saturdays of 2004, or weekend days only, etc...).

The actual daily chart shows a breakdown of daily grosses of Friday through Sunday or Monday through Thursday (depending on which day of the week you are viewing). Premier Pass members have two additional chart views available to them: a Full Week view, which shows an entire week of daily data, or a Single Day view, which shows a single day's box office in a traditional chart format.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
Weekend box office charts show gross receipts for a given weekend, which is Friday through Sunday unless otherwise noted. Studio estimates for the weekend are reported on Sunday mornings, generally between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. Pacific Time and reflect estimated Friday and Saturday box office receipts plus a projection for Sunday. As with daily box office, weekend estimates do not reflect all movies playing in theaters, but at least the Top 12 plus select movies below that may be reported.

Actual weekend box office receipts are reported Monday, generally after 1 p.m. Pacific Time, and reflect most movies currently playing in the marketplace. A final update to the chart may be made Monday night or later in the week to reflect grosses that are reported late.

Readers can view historical weekend box office from 1982 to the Present and have access to the weekend index, broken down by year. Premier Pass members also have access to an index by week number, showing a given week's box office history from 1982-Present. In addition, Premier Pass members can create up to three customized weekend box office chart views.

WEEKLY BOX OFFICE
Weekly box office charts show gross receipts for a given week, which is defined as Friday through Thursday. This information is reported on Friday afternoons for the previous week's box office, though additional titles are added to a given week's chart at later dates to account for grosses reported late.

Readers can view the current week's Top Five results. Premier Pass members have full access to historical weekly data back to 1982 as well as an index, similar to the weekend box office index.

MONTHLY, QUARTERLY and SEASONAL BOX OFFICE
These sections are for Premier Pass members only and allow readers to view box office receipts for the above time periods by Release Date and by Calendar Grosses. Monthly box office is a breakdown by month, of January through December; Quarterly box office is a breakdown by quarter (i.e., January through March is Q1, etc...); Seasonal box office is a breakdown by season. There are five box office seasons: Winter (the first day after New Year's week or weekend through the Thursday before the first Friday in March), Spring (the first Friday in March through the Thursday before the first Friday in May), Summer (the first friday in May through Labor Day Weekend), Fall (the day after Labor Day Weekend through the Thursday before the first Friday in November) and Holiday (the first Friday in November through New Year's week or weekend).

Each of these sections contains an index by the specified time period, from 1982 to the Present, as well as a breakdown of time periods for a given year, from 1982 to the Present. Each individual chart shows a list of movies for a specific time period in a specific year. Both the indexes and individual charts can be viewed by Release Date for all movies, Wide Releases only and Limited Releases only, as well as by Calendar Grosses. They can be sorted by any column, adjusted for ticket price inflation and individual charts can be filtered by studio.

YEARLY BOX OFFICE
Readers can view the top 50 movies of a given year from 1980 to 2000 and the top 150 movies from 2001 to the Present. Premier Pass members can view all movies tracked for these years as well as breakdowns by Release Date and Calendar Gross and can filter by studio.

Readers can also view the top 10 opening weekends for each given year; Premier Pass members can view all opening weekends and filter by wide and limited releases only as well as by studio.

Finally, Worldwide box office by year, which shows the movies' combined domestic and foreign grosses, can be viewed from 1989 to the Present. Movies are grouped by the year they were released domestically, regardless of when they were released in foreign markets.

HISTORICAL CHARTS
The data on the Yearly and All Time Domestic charts can be viewed "as of" a given date in history. For example, one can see what 1999's box office was like as of May 19. Or one can see what the All Time Domestic Box Office chart looked like in 1987.

This feature is limited to Premier Pass members only. Non-Premier Pass members can try this feature on a limited basis on our All Time Domestic Box Office chart.

Questions? Please write to mail@boxofficemojo.com.

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