Students often ask me how to find the amount of money a film has grossed.
The principal source for this info is VARIETY, but it's far from user
friendly.  If, for example, you want to find annual grosses for films of
the '50s, you've got to search through the January issues of VARIETY for
that decade until you stumble upon its annual grosses summary (actually,
it's net rental, not gross, figures in VARIETY, but this is as close as
you'll come).
 
The Web has made it easier to find grosses for recent films--though you're
stuck with the old VARIETY method for films before, say, 1989.  The
current, weekly grosses are posted on ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY Online:
 
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/ew/
 
For example, the numbers on the top 20 films for the week of November 7,
1997 are at (get that cut-n-paste ready):
 
http://cgi.pathfinder.com/@@DDVq2gYANTjr6AvW/ew/charts/archive/0,1694,14,00.
html
 
...but EW does not show you CUMULATIVE totals and is not so handy for
finding earlier films.  I recently came across a new Web site, though, that
does track films back to 1989:
 
http://www.boxofficeguru.com
 
BOguru even lists films alphabetically and then posts their numbers.
Fr'instance, if you want to find out how BEAUTICIAN AND THE BEAST did, you
can learn that it opened 02-07-97, closed its theatrical run 05-15-97, and
earned a total of US$11,465,242 or US$6,366 per screen.
 
If the BOguru can keep this up over the months (years?) to come, it'll make
for a very useful reference resource.  I know I'll be adding it to
ScreenSite, our Web site for film and TV studies (which recently moved to
www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite).
 
----
Jeremy Butler
Associate Professor
[log in to unmask]
ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite
Telecommunication & Film/University of Alabama/Tuscaloosa
 
----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/screensite