Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Film finance task force

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Welcome to the Film finance task force! This is a task force run by WikiProject Films

Articles that predominantly focus on box-office grosses and admissions, sales, budgets and the general business side of the film industry will come within the scope of this task force. The task force will also endeavor to ensure that the financial information present in general film articles is correct and sourced.

Existing guidelines relating to film finances are noted here.

Provide a summary of the film's commercial performance (box office grosses), denominated in the film's national currency, if possible. Avoid terminology such as "domestic" and "international", which is used by sites such as Box Office Mojo for box office figures from the United States and Canada, and elsewhere. Also avoid terms such as "North America" which will vary in meaning among Wikipedia readers, and instead specify the countries (for example, use "United States and Canada") or indicate additional figures as outside the primary country or territory. Since countries and territories may not precisely match in count, copy the term used by the source(s) being referenced for box office coverage.

This information can be included under the release section (see above), the reception section, or if sufficient coverage exists, it is recommended that this information is placed in a "Box office" or "Theatrical run" section. In addition to worldwide box office statistics, this section may detail specific results of opening weekends, results from different English-speaking territories, the number of theaters the film was released into, and audience demographics. Coverage of a notable opening in a country not of the film's origin may be included (e.g., an article on an American film set in China may include discussion of the film's performance in that country). Box office statistics can be sourced from dedicated tracking websites such as Box Office Mojo or Deadline Hollywood, and print publications such as Variety or The Hollywood Reporter. Determine a consensus from objective (retrospective if possible) sources about how a film performed and why, but editors should not draw their own conclusions about the success or failure of the film.

• Betty Logan (talk) 19:44, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• El Millo (talk) 20:26, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Sock (tock talk) 21:28, 1 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• BOVINEBOY2008 00:52, 2 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
• Mike Allen 05:01, 17 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, Deadline Hollywood (link) can also be used to cite box office numbers of films currently releasing in theaters. Note their data may not be as precise as some of the sources listed above.

This activity is not currently supported by the task force.

The Box Office Mojo website underwent an overhaul in 2019, resulting in several bugs that led to errors in charts and grosses in the database. The full extent of the issue is explained at the IMDb Customer Community boards (archive). The second and third problems on that list (the incorrect release years and the algorithmic error in the weekend charts) have been addressed to the best of our knowledge.

However the first problem (the double counting of some release grosses) still remains and will need to be fixed manually. To take Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 as an example, the 2010 New Zealand gross is included again in the 2016 reissue gross and the 2010 Spain gross is included again in 2020 reissue gross. This means that these two grosses are counted twice (once in the original gross and again in the reissue gross), and thus artificially inflating the lifetime gross of the film.

This seems to be a common error affecting a whole slew of films that have had re-releases. The goal is to catalog the grosses that have been double-counted in the table below and liaise with Box Office Mojo staff to correct the figures. This venture is of mutual benefit to both Wikipedia and Box Office Mojo.

For more details about the issues of the top 50 highest-grossing films, see this table.