And ad or promotional spend? This is a missing factor, surely?<p>A movie will have a reputation: good, bad, or indifferent. But a movie also has to be known. Ad spend gets the movie in front of eye-balls at least insofar as it gets to be known to exist. But also word-of-mouth, which is like free ad spend. This is why there are slow burners and mega-flops.<p>Incidentally this is why I have refused to see Titanic, Avatar, and the latest Star Wars in the theatre. If you scream in my face I&#x27;m not going to watch your movie in the theatre. Hype turns me off seeing something, but that&#x27;s just me not wanting to roll with the crowd perhaps, and not a function of hype itself. Seems like most people don&#x27;t react this way though.