It’s estimated that 70-75% of a film’s total theatrical gross will be earned on the first two weekends of its release. One reason for this is because when film studios know they have a dog, they open their “barker” on as many screens as they can. This way, they can make as much coin as possible before bad word-of-mouth kills the box office.

“Battlefield Earth” (2000), is an excellent example. It made $11.548 million on 3,307 screens on its opening weekend, which represented 53.8% of its total domestic gross. Simply put, if you make more than half of your domestic total in three days, it means by the Monday after your opening weekend, bad word-of-mouth quickly killed your film.

Even if a film is great, most people see it by the second weekend of its release, unless word-of-mouth increases its fan base or it earns repeat customers. A recent example of this is “Sex and The City 2” (2010). This picture grossed $95.3 million domestically and $286.4 million worldwide. But, the gross receipts dropped from $31 million in the opening weekend, to $12 million on the second weekend. That’s a 60.2% drop in revenue. That trend suggests those who wanted to see it did, but they didn’t recommend it.

Legs
When a film has “legs,” it means it keeps tearing ticket stubs week after week. “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” for example, opened with a weekend box office of $597,000, and then kept steadily chugging its way to a $241 million dollar domestic box office after 52 weeks in release. Fifty-two weeks. Think about that. That little indie romantic comedy stayed in theaters for one whole calendar year. Now that’s some seriously strong legs!

Per Screen Average
This is a key element in helping a distributor decide if he or she wants to expand your film into more theaters. For example, if your film makes $60,000 from being released on 30 screens, it has a $2,000 per screen average.

Read more: http://www.filmthreat.com/features/24148/#ixzz1K6v3oU8C

AS1 showed on ~300 screens and made $1.67 million in its opening weekend.

Ed