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