Lee's Movie Info - Box Office Terms

The amount of money spent on the production of the film. This does not include print or advertising costs. Some production companies are more tight lipped about their production budget than others. All listed budgets are quoted from trade papers and are not LMI (Lee's Movie Info) estimates. In some cases marketing, production and distribution costs are not separated, we will try to note those cases when they come to our attention.

MPAA Rating Find Movies Rated: G PG PG-13 R NC-17

The voluntary rating system was set up by the Motion Picture Associate Of America (MPAA) on November 1, 1968 in response to a break down of the previous 'Code' system that had been in place since 1922. The system initially broke films up into G, M, R, and X. M later was changed to GP and later to PG due to parents thinking Mature was more objectionable than R. In 1984, PG-13 was introduced and many have pointed to Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom (released in 1984 under the PG rating) as the main catalyst for the decision.

In 1990, the rating system changed X to NC-17 which was trademarked and could not be self-applied to movies by anyone but the MPAA, certainly a problem with the X rating. Also added was the brief explanation for the rating which you can find on most movie posters. Read more about the rating system >>

NR means either the MPAA has not rated the film or Lee's Movie Info has not yet inputted the MPAA rating.

CinemaScore

These are grades provided by a private company of the same name. They have been polling opening night audiences for over 20 years on a A to F grading system. These scores reflect the moviegoers (the ones who make or break box office, as opposed to critics) initial reaction to a movie.

The most important thing to remember attempting to do analysis with these grades is that the group of people polled are different for each movie. For a Paul Newman movie, a good portion of the audience might be over 65. Whereas in a Vin Diesel movie, a good portion might be under 18. The standards of the audiences will no doubt be different. In the mind of a 13 year old male, the action movie might have been the best he's ever seen, but don't be surprised if the box office for that movie quickly drops off.

NOTE: Cinemascore stopped updating their site in late 2003.

Running Time Find Movies With Length: 125+ 125-115 114-105 105-95 <95

This is the reported length of domestic (United States) prints. This includes the credits, but does not include pre-show, advertising or trailers. Running times may vary on prints outside of the US, at film festivals, or of re-releases.

Genre

dragon action adventure animation biography comedy documentary drama family fantasy horror musical mystery non-english romance satire sequel western xxx 3D baseball based on novel based on true story cgi courtroom crime gross-out heist IMAX jail medieval military mockumentary politics religion remake school sci-fi sports thriller vampires war college cops cross dressing death row future gay / lesbian teen time travel vietnam wedding WWII

An semi-arbitrary distinction set up by LMI to help distinguish movies into several categories. This is very subjective but it can be a helpful tool in finding box office trends. This site will periodically add new genres and update genre-movie associations.

HSX: Hollywood Stock Exchange

HSX is a virtual stock market for movies and Hollywood stars with box office results standing in for earnings reports. It is the largest freely available gauge of public sentiment regarding movies and box office. You can register and play for free at http://www.hsx.com. The price (in Hollywood dollars, $H) indicates the predicted gross after 4 weeks of wide release (24 days) or 12 weeks in limited release.

Opening Weekend / Adjusting: HSX adjusts moviestocks that open wide (over 650 theaters) usually with the formula 2.9 X estimated weekend box office. For these moviestocks, dividing the current stock price by 2.9 gives the opening weekend box office predicted by the HSX market. Dec. 2004: Analysis of over 200 weekend-movie-opens showed HSX averaged under +/- 30% accuracy error.

Outside Links
- IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) The most comprehensive site for movie information especially for cast and crew credits. The publicly traded Amazon (NASDAQ NM:AMZN) owns and operates IMDB

- Official Sites Refers to the site set up by the distributor or production company. This site typically posts the US version before posting other possible official sites.

- Fan Sites If you have a fan site you would like this site to link, please find the actor, director or film that the fan site relates to and click on the + next to the fan sites link. Depending on backlog, the site will be reviewed and possibly added within a week. Please do not email any links.