A Bit on the Expelled Box Office
Posted on April 21st, 2008 by blue collar scientist(Update: Although I posted on Monday, the box office numbers cited below were revised, showing a very sharp drop in Expelled attendance on Sunday. The upshot is that Expelled failed to reach the $3.2 million previously reported on its opening weekend. The revised figure, now available on the page I link to, is $2,970,848.)
The box office numbers for the creationism propaganda movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, are (like any other set of numbers that measures something) interesting. Expelled barely achieved $3 million in its opening weekend, despite the producers’ expectation of $12 to $15 million.
The high opening weekend is mainly the result of getting Expelled released in lots of theaters - 1,052 of them - on a weekend when no major films were being released. And it probably doesn’t hurt that they are paying people to watch the movie, either - not something I’ve noticed on offer on any other movie I’ve wanted to see.
Through its website, Team “Expelled” is offering goodies to entice group sales in the Bible Belt and beyond, a move some call borderline bribery.
The ” ‘Expelled’ Challenge” urges schools and home-schooling groups to get students, parents and faculty to show up in force, promising donations of $5 to $10 per ticket stub for those who register.
“In speaking with Christian schools, we’ve found that hosting a school-wide ‘mandatory’ field trip is the best way to maximize your school’s earning potential,” the site explains.
Despite these advantages, on opening day, it did a dismal $1,145 per theater, and plummeted after that to less than $950 per. Compare this to the per-theater figures for An inconvenient Truth ($70,000), Super Size Me ($12,000), and Roger and Me ($20,000).
Also compare opening weekend figures: Expelled did 3.2 million in 1,052 theaters, while Sicko earned $23.9 million in just 441 theaters. Fahrenheit 9/11 earned $23.9 million in 868 theaters.
If you do some simple math, and assume four screenings per day, and that the ticket price is $7, then each showing attracted somewhere around 37 people. That’s not a lot.
Another way to evaluate this is to do actual statistics, which S. Walker at Inconcinnus Sermo has kindly completed. Go there to look at the chart. After an initial mathematical mistake, he corrected his analysis and concludes:
As you can see based on the number of theater’s that expelled opened in, it is a flop of extraordinary proportions. Although this isn’t the best way to do it (I don’t have time to sit and play with this), the residual of the expelled data is -16 standard deviations away from the predicted line.
Another question we should be asking concerns the demographics. My impression is that this movie will mainly preach to the converted - that is, closed-minded, extremist science-hating religious radicals. Most mainstream people won’t go see it. A list of states in which the movie is screening is interesting (just scroll down to the last list of states, updated April 16 - most of Lippard’s predictions are at this point moot) - you’ll note the strong bias placing the screenings in as many theaters as possible in states having a high proportion of fundamentalist Christians and Mormons. Even Alaska got two theaters, which was not the case for opening weekend on a lot of other documentaries - I think we had to wait about two weeks for An Inconvenient Truth, and longer for some other documentaries that had similar earnings.
So, to conclude: Expelled’s numbers were not very good. It appears they preached mainly to the choir. Still, Expelled is bad news. Anytime you see a big block of people conspiring to lie like this, and demonize innocent people as responsible for the Holocaust, in an appealing pop-cultural way, you’ve got a society with serious problems, and Expelled is not going to make those problems better. But it is at least clear that Expelled is not on track to being much of a success as a movie - certainly not the success that many of us were worried about leading up to the release.
Tags: box office, earnings, expelled, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, receipts, screenings
April 21st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
[...] Blue Collar Scientist Science education, public outreach, and activism for everyone. « A Bit on the Expelled Box Office [...]
April 21st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Heh. I was waiting until next weekend to see how far the B.O. for Expelled drops, especially compared to other movies.
I would note that the other movie that ranks 9% on the Tomatometer, Prom Night, still beat Expelled on its second week.
Also of note: someone apparently is using a student e-mail account at UAA to send a spam ad in favor of Expelled. It reads:
“Hello Everyone!
I recently had the opportunity to go see the movie ‘Expelled’ starring
Ben Stein. I would highly recommend this film in light of our
discussion concerning various academic and scientific discussions in classrooms
today. I think that it has an immense value in contributing
information to the dialogue despite the horrible reviews give it by the media.
The movie is only an hour and a half long and contains some brief
images of the Holocaust. Over all, the movie is tasteful and useful for
ages high school and older. Please consider seeing this movie and passing
the word along to others who might benefit from this information.
Thanks!”
I’ll try to get in touch with UAA to find out about this abuse of student e-mail.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:16 pm
It looks like the most recent correction at S. Walker’s site puts Expelled at 50% below the ticket sales suggested by the regression line. But that line comes from a linear least-squares fit to a log-log plot, which makes baby Gauss cry, and the large number of theaters in which Expelled opened puts it right past the edge of the data, where predictions are not necessarily good.
April 21st, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Also, I’ve had a hard time getting solid figures for these things, but from poking around the Internets, it looks like (a) movie theaters take about 50% of the ticket sales, and (b) the cost per release print is about $1500, maybe more (you know, inflation).
April 21st, 2008 at 3:22 pm
In my opinion, if I may venture it, is that if the sales of “Expelled” do indeed “flop” statistically, that doesn’t mean the main precept of the movie is incorrect. Is that the argument you are trying to make, that if the film does “flop” then the film itself is no good? Your blog entry seems to primarily focus on the box office returns rather than the message of the movie. As such, I gather that to you the returns a movie brings in dictate the impact or relevancy of a film rather than how those who viewed the film felt when they left the theatre.
Having seen the film, if professors in academia, scientists, and members of the press, living in a country where freedom of speech is a right choose to say that Intelligent Design (I.D.) could have a role to play into how life as we know it originated, if these men and women are being ostracized, denied tenure, and/or are shunned within their respective communities, then there is indeed a problem that should be made known. This was the main point I saw when I was watching the movie.
I don’t understand why you feel as you do as stated in the last sentence of your blog, “But it is at least clear that Expelled is not on track to being much of a success as a movie - certainly not the success that many of us were worried about leading up to the release.” What are you all worried about? Are you worried that freedom of speech and thought may be allowed within society and science? Is it wrong in your mind to have varying opinions on the origin of species? Are you worried that I.D. may be slightly, partially, or wholly correct? Professor Dawkins is open to I.D., of the space alien sort, as he professed in the movie.
Those are the questions that I think should be the focus, not the box office returns of a movie. Can a man or women in America give their honest opinion about a matter, in this case scientific, and not be penalized or hounded for it? Focusing on the box office returns tells me that you are concerned about how many people are watching this movie. And so if a lot of people are viewing this movie, then a lot of people are being exposed to what is being purported in the movie. So if what is being said in the movie is true, and a lot of people are exposed to it, then the Law of Large numbers states that some of those who saw the movie may start to do something about what they saw. They may talk to their friends and family about this issue. They may even encourage others to go and see it, or see it again for themselves. They may go as far as to write their Congress and House representatives. Are you afraid of people with a viewpoint that differs from yours becoming active and mobilized for a cause that you do not agree with? Is that what you are afraid of? Because that is the tone I get from reading your blog.
April 21st, 2008 at 3:54 pm
As far as political documentaries go, isn’t Morgan Spurlock’s “Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?” coming out soon? Let’s see how that stacks up, box office-wise, especially with the more limited publicity campaign.
April 21st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
[...] Blue Collar Scientist and Inconcinnus Sermo have posted about the dismal performance of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed at the box-office. [...]
April 21st, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Well, Duh.
What makes the premise of the movie incorrect is that it is basically one fatuous lie from beginning to end.
No. Duh.
Otherwise I would have said “this movie sucks because it isn’t making me any money,” or something like that.
Well, Duh again.
This blog entry does indeed primarily focus on the box office returns rather than the message of the movie, because when I wrote this blog entry I was interested in the box office numbers rather than the message of the movie. I tackle the message of the movie elsewhere.
Obviously not. Duh.
Right below where I’m typing is a list of five posts of mine about my views on the impact and relevancy of the movie. Am I the only one that can see them? Do we have magic invisible HTML code operating here?
Ok, Joshua V - your first paragraph was so breathtakingly stupid that I have to go wash the residue off now. I’ll leave it to someone else to respond to the rest of the equally stupid pollution you’ve left on my blog, if they think it worthwhile. But I will respond to this:
When you live in a democracy with free speech as I do, and when a tightly organized and well-funded group of anti-Americans radicals creates propaganda movies for the purpose of lying about history and demonizing important and valuable members of the community, thereby attacking at the foundations of American values and democracy, a responsible citizen gets worried about that. The ones that don’t worry about it are forsaking their civic duty, or actively siding with the traitors.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Blake,
Don’t forget that they are subsidizing some viewers of the movie by making $5 to $10 donations per ticket stub to schools, churches, or whatever. On a $7 ticket price, that would be what, 142% to 280% the income from the ticket? Of course my seven dollar ticket might be too small - I was wanting to be generous about the figures. In Anchorage, $7 will get you into some matinees.
I also wonder what their publicity expenses were. Massive - they had a ton of advertising for a movie that did so little on the first weekend. I’m not sure what number “massive” would be, though.
May 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 am
[...] No Intelligence Allowed has been out in the theaters now for two weeks, and we can revisit the question: how has it [...]
June 30th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
I saw Expelled in Canada this weekend, and can’t understand the antagonism toward the movie from certain quarters. I think if the media had pushed Expelled the way Inconvenient Truth was pushed, it would have done better. But most media types are of liberal persuasion, and can’t stand anything that might challenge their world view.