Earlier this month, I noted that no 10th-place-gross movie has ever won the Box Office Power Rankings title.
That’s still true.
But Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire – which expanded to 589 sites this past weekend and landed in eighth place in overall box office – could have finished in last place and still won this week’s crown.
With 31 points (out of a maximum 40) and a three-point edge over The Tale of Despereaux, Slumdog could afford to lose two points – the difference between eighth and 10th place in gross. But it would need to retain all its other points, including for per-theater box office.
Slumdog finished with $5,184.65 in per-theater revenue, while the movie below it in that category (Despereaux again) earned $3,255.05. That gives a window of between $1.92 million (Desperaux’s per-theater revenue multiplied by Slumdog’s sites) and $2.05 million (Quantum of Solace’s 10th-place take) for Boyle’s movie to finish last and first simultaneously. (Eleventh-place Milk earned $1.73 million, so it wouldnt’ have sneaked in.)
And I officially spend too much time on this crap.
| Box Office Power Rankings: December 19-21, 2008 | |||||||
| Box Office Ranks | Critics’ Ranks | ||||||
| Rank | Movie | Last Week | Gross | Per Theater | Rotten Tomatoes | Metacritic | Total |
| 1 | Slumdog Millionaire | – | 3 ($3.1M) | 8 ($5.2K) | 10 (93) | 10 (86) | 31 |
| 2 | The Tale of Despereaux | – | 8 ($10.1M) | 7 ($3.3K) | 7 (53) | 6 (53) | 28 |
| 3 | Yes Man | – | 10 ($18.3M) | 9 ($5.3K) | 4 (44) | 4 (45) | 27 |
| 4 | Bolt | 1 | 4 ($4.1M) | 3 ($1.4K) | 9 (85) | 9 (68) | 25 |
| 5 | Seven Pounds | – | 9 ($14.9M) | 10 ($5.4K) | 3 (28) | 1 (36) | 23 |
| 6 | Twilight | 3 | 5 ($5.2M) | 4 ($1.7K) | 5 (50) | 7 (56) | 21 |
| 7 | Quantum Of Solace | 4 | 1 ($2.1M) | 2 ($1.1K) | 8 (65) | 8 (58) | 19 |
| 8 | Australia | 6 | 2 ($2.2M) | 1 ($1.0K) | 7 (53) | 6 (53) | 16 |
| 8 | The Day the Earth Stood Still | 5 | 7 ($9.9M) | 6 ($2.8K) | 1 (20) | 2 (39) | 16 |
| 8 | Four Christmases | 6 | 6 ($7.7M) | 5 ($2.2K) | 2 (25) | 3 (41) | 16 |
Methodology
Culture Snob’s Box Office Power Rankings balance box office and critical reception to create a better measure of a movie’s overall performance against its peers than gross receipts alone.
The weekly rankings cover the 10 top-grossing movies in the United States for the previous weekend. We assign equal weight to box office and critical opinion, with each having two components. The measures are: box-office gross, per-theater average, Rotten Tomatoes score, and Metacritic score.
Why those four? Box-office gross basically measures the number of people who saw a movie in a given weekend. Per-theater average corrects for blockbuster-wannabes that flood the market with prints, and gives limited-release movies a fighting chance. Rotten Tomatoes measures critical opinion in a binary way. And Metacritic gives a better sense of critics’ enthusiasm (or bile) for a movie.
For each of the four measures, the movies are ranked and assigned points (10 for the best performer, one for the worst). Finally, those points are added up, with a maximum score of 40 and a minimum score of four.
