It Was Good While It Lasted

UPI reports that Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, hasn’t done so well after a promising start:

Former U.S. vice-President Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” has seen its ticket sales plummet after a promising start.

After Gore’s global warming documentary garnered the highest average per play ever for a film documentary during its limited Memorial Day weekend opening, recent theater takes for the film have been less than stellar, Daily Variety reports.

The film dropped from its record $70,333 per play to $12,334 during its third week and its numbers have continued to fall as the film opens in smaller cities and suburbs across the country.

It’s no shock, I suppose, that most people aren’t interested in seeing propaganda films about the weather. But the topic is an interesting and important one which we wrote about quite a few years ago, and will try to return to as time permits.

Via Power Line News.

UPDATE: Some web site criticized this post on the ground that, while revenue per theater has indeed dropped precipitously, An Inconvenient Truth has been put into vastly more theaters, so that there has been a sight increase in total revenue (as opposed to per-theater revenue) between, say, last weekend and the first weekend in June. But the UPI story that described receipts as “plummeting” was obviously referring to the per-theater numbers. It notes that the film had the “highest average per play ever for a film documentary” during the weekend it opened, but “the film dropped from $70,333 per play to $12,334….” People in the movie business often measure a film’s popularity based on the “per screen” or “per theater” numbers. By that measure, the film’s perfomance has become pathetic, with per-theater revenue during the week running around $500. And, among all movies now in release, An Inconvenient Truth is languishing at number 67 in total revenue.

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