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Although this has begun to change, particularly for the larger chains, the industry standard has long been that the ratio for the first weekend is called the 90/10 ratio. Ninety percent of each ticket goes to the studio and 10 percent to the theater owner. The longer the movie stays in the theater, the more money the theater owner can make off each ticket. But these days, explains Chabot, the pressure to put a new movie in almost each week makes it nearly impossible for many small theater owners, in particular, to reap more than 10 percent of the ticket profit. Phonecalls to several studio distribution departments for comment went unreturned.

Cinema owners worry about ticket prices, too

"The longer the movie stays in the theater, the more money the theater owner can make off each ticket."

Probably doesn't help when a movie is released on DVD two weeks after appearing in the theater, huh?

toddster,

Thanks, that's very interesting.

Movies normally drop off about 25%-50% per week, with summer- and winter-season "event" openings closer to 50%.

At that drop-off rate, given the data you provide, a theater owner will grab between 20 and 35%.

I've already conceded I may have been a little misleading in leaving off some of the information I had read, but I think this new information is consistent with what I had read, which is that more that 50% of gross revenues go to distribution costs SUCH AS (and again, I know I left that out in the original) theater owners' take. Other factors, I suppose, might include physical printing, supply-side promotion, physical distribution, distributors' take, and probably several factors I'm ignorant of.

Toddster, it would seem to me to make sense that much of a distributors' income is a flat rate per showing, although I know that per-ticket-sale take is at least a major component of overall billing of new movies. To the extent that it is per showing, the Da Vinci Code must have done fairly mediocre, no? After all, each screen can show only have as many showings of DVC than of Over The Hedge, and Over The Hedge still clocked TDV in total screens.