Slumdog’s Slow Distribution Model
In late January I did an analysis of Slumdog Millionaire, of its unique distribution and resulting ticket sales. Given the movie’s eight Oscar wins, I wanted to do an update on its box office performance.
Most important has been Fox’s steady buildup in the movie’s distribution, which has taken place in four major points.
- November 12, when it opened up at 10 theaters
- December 19 ,when it expanded to 589 theaters. This is just before Christmas.
- January 23, when it further expanded to 1,411 theaters. This is one day after the Oscar nominations were announced and was probably intended to anticipate prospective awards audience.
- February 20, when it reached 2,243 theaters. This is two days before the Oscars and is probably intended to capture interest after the movie, hopefully, won several awards.
This last distribution tier, above 2,000 theaters is the the normal opening distribution for major comedies, and it is interesting to see how Fox has reversed the normal path for distribution for Slumdog Millionaire.
This organic buildup is an alternative distribution model followed by movies can’t be expected to immediately attract a mass audience. A similar path was also followed for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, which opened up at only 16 theaters on December 8, 2000, and finally reached its distribution peak of 2,027 theaters on March 23, 2001, two days before the 2001 Oscars when it won four awards out of the ten it was nominated for. Subsequently the film’s distribution dropped to 1,628 two weeks later, and I am curious to see if Slumdog Millionaire will maintain a wide distribution for longer since it won so many awards including Best Picture.
In any case these tiers of distribution shown above have resulted in new peaks for the daily gross.
The latest peak will not be reached until next Saturday, since the Oscars took place on Sunday night. I estimate that it should be around $5.25 million.
Finally the movie is just about pass the $100 million mark. The movie’s growth should continue for some time and I will be sure to write up another posting when it begins to close its theatrical run.
