Prompt and public reporting on U.S. movie ticket sales has been an accepted practice in the film industry for decades. The “weekend box office report” is a regular feature of Sunday news roundups, amounting to a regular, free promotion for movies and the movie business. However, the COVID-19 crisis has upended this tradition since studios have held back reporting grosses that have been minuscule when compared to pre-pandemic levels.
In some cases, spin doctors tried to cherry-pick certain figures that show a glimmer of good news in a landscape of disappointment. One example was reporting results from the much-anticipated release of Tenet over Labor Day weekend 2020. Warner Bros. held results until a five-day total was ready, coming in at a “pandemic-best” of $20.2M. This result was significantly below expectations and paled in comparison to the results from similar films which were released before the coronavirus hit.
Indeed, many studios and distributors have also experimented with selective reporting, while claiming that the traditional reporting would unfairly tar their titles as box office failures. However, as theatres recover, a question remains whether reporting on theatrical results will revert back to tradition or evolve into a selective exercise that highlights the successes and underplays the disappointments.