Caveh Zahedi - Blog (Sex Addict debuts at #7)

Today, Indiewire released their list of the top ten box office specialty releases and I was disappointed to see that "Sex Addict" wasn't on the list. But when I looked more closely, I realized that Indiewire had made a mistake and that "Sex Addict" should have been #7 (the film's per screen average was $5,345, which is how a film's box office ranking is calculated.) Here is the list they published:

"The Top Ten So Far...

1. "Friends With Money" (Sony Pictures Classics) $589,332 wknd ($21,048 per scrn)
2. "Brick" (Focus Features) $199,286 wknd ($9,490 per scrn)
3. "Drawing Restraint 9" (IFC Films) $25,266 wknd ($8,422 per scrn)
4. "Thank You For Smoking" (Fox Searchlight) $2,309,097 wknd ($7,723 per scrn)
5. "The Fallen Idol" (Rialto) $6,456 wknd ($6,456 per scrn)
6. "4" (Leisure Time Features) $5,815 wknd ($5,815 per scrn)
7. "Kalamazoo?" (Reel Source) $22,074 wknd ($4,415 per scrn)
8. Free Zone" (New Yorker) $8,618 wknd ($4,309 per scrn)
9. "The Syrian Bride" (Koch Lorber) $12,759 wknd ($4,253 per scrn)
10. "White Rainbow" (Rocky Mountain Pictures) $4,180 wknd ($4,180 per scrn)"

As anyone who can count can see, "I Am A Sex Addict" should have been right after "4" and right before "Kalamazoo?" I'm sure it was an honest mistake on Indiewire's part, but theatrical exhibitors use the list to decide what films to book, and Indiewire's erroneous exclusion of "I Am A Sex Addict" from their top ten list means that there will be fewer bookings for the film. Not sure how this happened, but it would be great if Indiewire would publicly correct the error.

Comments

I'm pretty sure the per screen average is based on the total amount of money made from the film. If you made more than the ones currently on the list (for instance, over $4,180), then you should be on the list, but you notice that the top ten is calculated by gross profit from the weekend.

I might be wrong, though that's what it looks like.

Posted by JD on Apr 12, 2006 at 06:46AM

I noticed this when the list was posted yesterday, and I was also wondering what happened to "Sex Addict" since I knew its numbers would put it on this list. I hope you've contacted IndieWire directly about it. I'm sure they would want to correct it.

Chris

Posted by Chris Hansen on Apr 12, 2006 at 10:15AM

JD,
If you look closely, you'll see that "Thank You For Smoking" made 2 million over the weekend but is only listed as #4 at the box office, whereas "Friends with Money" which made half a million is listed as #1. That's because box office ranking is based on grosses per screen, not grosses overall.

Posted by Caveh on Apr 12, 2006 at 10:34AM

JD,
You are correct in that the mainstream media ranks movies based on total gross at the box office, with no consideration whatsoever as to how many screens the film played on. So films like "I Am A Sex Addict" don't stand a chance. How wonderful it would be to live in a country that ranked films by per-screen average.

The Indiewire listing is a partial corrective. Though it would be nice to see a list that included all films in distributions. Not Indiewire's domain, I understand.

That's too bad about them missing your film - are you contacting them to correct it?

Posted by Joel on Apr 12, 2006 at 01:25PM

Submitting sales figures on time to Rentrak (source for indieWIRE rankings) is something that IFC Films should be doing (maybe they have & the disconnect is somewhere else). But then we already talked about this through e-mail, just posting here so others can know about the Rentrak & iW BOT connection.

Let's see if Sex Addict shows up on next week's iW BOT. Maybe iW will correct/publish an update to this week's listing later on.

Good luck w/ the NYC opening Mr. Caveh.

The Sujewa
http://www.wilddiner.com/

Posted by s*u*j*e*w*a on Apr 12, 2006 at 04:13PM

hi caveh,

you are correct, the film made $10,691 over the weekend, but unfortunately there was an error in our data feed from Rentrak (the company that reports grosses to us). They mistakenly indicated that the film was in 3 theaters, instead of 2.

it took us some time today to figure out the cause of the error, but we have sorted it out and are attempting to correct the chart. sorry about the mistake.

Posted by eug on Apr 12, 2006 at 04:53PM

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