Chapter 881 Stealing the box office

The summer vacation is over, and Duke is still on vacation, but instead of leaving North America, he often goes to Lucasfilm in San Francisco to discuss with a group of screenwriters the plans and scripts of the new Star Wars.

As I said in the past, what Duke requires is not innovation and creativity, but the most secure plan. For an extremely successful series of movies like Star Wars, the risks brought by so-called innovation far outweigh conservative ones.

In addition, Duke also accompanied Scarlett Johansson to Tennessee, where Scarlett was planning to invest in the Sovereign theater chain company here, which is one of the reasons why Duke is so concerned about ticket prices.

The current Sovereign Theater Company is far inferior to AMG and Emperor Entertainment, but it is a representative of high-end theater chains in North America.

Perhaps older North American audiences still remember the scenes of some movie theaters under Sovereign Entertainment in the past, with sticky theater floors, cramped theater seats, and pitiful projection screens.

But all the Sovereign Entertainment theaters seen in Duke have disappeared, replaced by a variety of advanced screens, brand-new audio-visual projection quality, luxurious seats that can be reserved online, and even include points. Cinema with meal service.

Sovereign Entertainment Cinemas has refurbished more than 600 screens and related equipment in its 50 theaters since two years ago. Just replacing fixed back seats with adjustable back seats has significantly increased The box office receipts of related theaters.

At the same time, according to the plan of Junhao Entertainment Cinemas, the company will also plan to renovate more than 2,000 movie screens and related equipment in the next two years.

This is also one of the reasons why Sovereign Company financed externally.

Accompanying Scarlett around Sovereign Company, Duke did not object to her investment plan. In the next few decades, theaters will still be the foundation of the film industry. Old theaters such as Sovereign Company , as long as it works properly. It's still a pretty good investment.

Sovereign Entertainment not only renovated the existing theaters, but also opened new theaters. Duke and Scarlett also went to their newly opened theaters. Experience service.

This brand-new high-end service includes the latest super-large IMAX movie screen, newly upgraded theater lighting equipment, newly upgraded Dolby Atmos 3D surround sound, real-time online seat selection, and priority to provide movie theater purchase rights in the most prosperous locations.

Of course, all of these upgrades mean higher ticket prices.

In these luxurious high-end theaters, Sovereign Entertainment Cinemas has also begun to trial a limited-edition black-anodized rigid movie ticket. After purchasing this ticket, the audience can watch any movie in the theater on the same day without time limit.

At the same time, Sovereign Entertainment Cinemas will also update its membership points system to further strengthen the derivative services related to rewarding points after members buy tickets and watch movies. After the implementation, it will be rolled out to theaters under Sovereign Entertainment across the United States.

In addition, as the profit focus of theaters, Sovereign Company also made a big fuss about selling products. All the theaters under the theater chain provide in-theater bars, leather adjustable back seats, and in-theater catering services provided by waiters at any time...

Because of this, Sovereign Cinemas has gradually become a diamond-level high-end cinema in the North American market in recent years.

Originally, Duke planned to accompany Scarlett to visit more theaters here and participate in the investment negotiations between the two parties, but the new news came from Warner Bros. But he had to return to Los Angeles early.

Fortunately, there was also Tina Fey who came with her. With her as a veteran assisting Scarlett in the negotiation, Duke was at ease.

The reason why Duke hurried back to Los Angeles was because his film was involved in a storm in the market on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.

It seems that The Dark Knight Rises can't be calm at all. A few days ago, the stealing box office scandal broke out in the market across the Pacific. And The Dark Knight Rises, which sold nearly 1.6 billion RMB, was passively involved in it, and part of the box office was moved to the box office of other movies.

Duke, you know the Chinese market better.

In the conference room of Warner Bros., Doug Walter said with a frown. Do you think there is a better solution?

No... Duke shook his head, That's not our territory.

He thought for a while, and said to Jamie Johnson, When you go over there tomorrow, bring my protest letter. Also, report this matter to the MPAA, and they will use diplomatic channels to deal with it to the other side. Press, to prevent such a thing from happening to our movie again.

Having worked in related industries on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, Duke knows very well that stealing box office is not an exception at all.

Stealing the box office of Hollywood movies and replacing them with some domestic movies is a frequently used method.

Jamie Johnson was about to fly to the other side to resolve the incident and lodge a serious protest on behalf of Warner and Duke. He couldn't help sighing, This market is indeed very large, but it is also very chaotic.

Don't forget, they are just getting started. Duke walked over and patted him lightly, We have also gone through this stage.

This is what happened on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. They actually don't have much to do. Unless clear and targeted legal measures are introduced on the other side, similar things will happen again.

And Duke knows better than the two Warner executives that things are actually more chaotic and serious than they thought.

The current Chinese film market is thriving, creating the best total box office results in history every year, but under the prosperous surface of the Chinese film market, it is actually turbulent. Anyone who cares about this industry has basically heard of stealing Box office, buy box office and other vocabulary.

As a member of this industry, Duke has done some understanding of this, and some things are indeed shocking.

To talk about the details of stealing box office and buying box office, you must first understand the distribution system and account sharing system of movies on the other side. Players in the market can be roughly divided into three parties-producers, distributors and theaters.

It is not difficult to understand that the producer produces the film; the distributor is responsible for copying, scheduling, negotiating and signing contracts with theaters and other distribution work; the theater is mainly engaged in the screening of movies.

So how did these three parties share the box office revenue?

If you buy a movie ticket for 1 yuan, the yuan is generally allocated in this way, 5% is used as a special fund for film industry development, and 3.3% is used as tax.

After removing these, the remaining 73.36 yuan will be divided between the film studio and the theater according to the ratio of 43:57. That is to say, for a movie ticket of 1 yuan, the producer + distributor can get 31.54 yuan, and the theater can get 41.82 yuan.

Of course, this is just a general basic system, and not every movie will follow it exactly.

It can be seen from this that the box office of a movie, except for the part that must be handed over to the state, is left to the film studio and the theater chain to share the accounts. Although there is an agreed account sharing ratio, there is no escape from a profit word. Sometimes theaters steal the box office in order to make more profits.

This is also one of the reasons for stealing the box office.

For example, for a movie with a box office of 1 billion, the share of accounts due to the producer + distributor is nearly 400 million yuan. At this time, if the theater uses a series of means to reduce the actual box office to 800 million yuan, then the part that has been hidden will be taken care of. It is exclusive to the theater, and there is no need to share the bill with the film studio.

This means that the film studio may have lost its due benefits. To use a simple sentence to explain the box office stealing-the theater used abnormal means to steal the share that the film studio deserved.

In order to achieve their goals, theaters can use a variety of means.

For example, handwritten tickets, admission without tickets, and admission with invalid tickets are the most basic of the many methods used by cinemas to hide the box office.

Of course, it is not ruled out that there is a bug in the ticketing system of the theater, and tickets cannot be issued normally, so handwritten tickets are temporarily used. But the probability of this happening is very small. If there are a large number of handwritten tickets and no-ticket admission in a theater, it can basically be concluded that there is no doubt that the box office is stolen.

When encountering a handwritten ticket, you can ask the theater to go out to print the ticket, but if this is not the case, will you avoid stealing the box office? of course not.

Things like handwritten tickets are the most basic means of stealing box office. Now issuers often adopt monitoring methods. Handwritten tickets are easy to be discovered. A more advanced method has become popular-structured tickets.

What is a structured ticket?

For example, the distributor generally agrees with the cinema on the minimum ticket price of a movie, for example, the agreed minimum ticket price for movie A is RMB. In actual situations, it is definitely not sold at the lowest price, but priced according to market conditions.

Assuming a movie, the theater sets the ticket price at RMB according to the actual situation. If the audience buys a movie ticket for RMB, then the RMB will be shared with the film studio, and the theater will have no profit to steal.

So the theater came up with such a method: bundled packages.

The theater sells another one yuan package: movie ticket + popcorn + drink, 30 yuan out of 80 yuan is counted as movie box office - 30 yuan is the lowest ticket price - the saved yuan is all counted as popcorn and drink income.

How does this benefit the cinema? The income from popcorn and drinks does not need to be shared with the film crew, and all goes into the pockets of the theater chain.

In order to make profits, the wisdom of businessmen is endless. There is also a more advanced method of stealing box office than bundled packages that is becoming popular, that is, theaters adopt a dual system of bookkeeping and reimbursement.

The theater’s billing system is connected to the box office monitoring system. The movie box office that the theater and the film studio know comes from this system, and the other box office system is a billing system set up by the theater privately. It can also be used to print movie tickets , but the box office was stolen by the theater itself.

As we all know, theaters are not the only ones who steal the box office. Many times, the film studios will also join in it. Capital is inherently profit-seeking. Coupled with the imperfect regulatory measures on the other side, various box office methods for profit emerge in endlessly.

For example, the most typical box office move. (to be continued ~^~)

PS:  Ask for monthly and recommendation tickets!