I'm a huge statistics nerd. I'm also a movie buff. In addition to that, I have a keen interest for politics. Ever so often, I get to combine the three. This entry is one such occasion.This weekend Al Gore's global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth opened in limited release. According to Box Office Mojo, the movie took in an estimated $266,000 in four theaters over the weekend. Let's compare that with with another movie that opened this weekend, X-Men: The Last Stand. In 3,690 theaters, it took in an estimated $107,000,000 (these are three-day weekend numbers; Monday is Memorial Day in the US which essentially makes it a four-day weekend).
Of course, that's comparing apples to oranges. The Truth is a documentary. About your imminent death, no less. Not exactly blockbuster material.
The most profitable documentary ever, Fahrenheit 9/11, took in $119,194,771 in its entire (American) run. X-Men almost took in all that in a weekend.
The strategy for the release of the Truth (and many independent movies) is to build up word-of-mouth by first opening in limited release, and then expand into more theaters as the movie's reputation grows. With Hollywood blockbusters, it's the exact opposite; they open in as many theaters as possible in order to take in as much money in the first weekend as possible. That is to minimize the effect of bad word-of-mouth getting around too much and having too much of an impact on the box office (although, the X-Men flicks have typically been well liked, and I don't think the latest one will be an exception).
Where the Truth goes from here is anybody's guess. It did extremely well in it's opening weekend, and it's been getting excellent reviews pretty much all around. If it catches fire, it can be this year's March of the Penguins (the second most profitable documentary ever, with $77,413,017 in US box office). My prediction* is that the Truth ends up with about $25,000,000, good for third most profitable documentary ever.
And X-Men will end up with about $350,000,000.
* It should be noted I'm horribly bad at predictions.
