As a former sales and marketing manager, my evaluation of Meet the Mormons. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2014&wknd=41&p=.htm

When evaluating sales numbers, never just take the gross sales. You need to look at many factors and try to determine what they mean.

First, yes, it had $2.7 million in gross sales, for Friday and Saturday, but that's only a little bit of the important information.

Second, it's only being shown at 317 theaters in contrast to the thousands for most of the top 10 movies.

The average per theater is $8,517, which is disproportionally huge, with only Addicted with a higher average for the big movies. The numbers 1 and two movies had a lower average per theater but many more theaters, so the take was much higher.

Here comes the big question:

If more theaters were to show the movie, how much more sales would there be? I'd argue that some more, but not a lot.

Given the push by TSCC, it looked like they went full out, so having more theaters in a given market probably wouldn't increase attendants. There are markets which aren't being reached, but undoubtedly outside the Moridor.

Expect the numbers to drop like a rock next week. Even if it did a more than expected 2,000 per theater, that's only $634,000. By week three it will be completely dead.

Who knows, many there are some uber-rich Mormons who continue to support it, but that doesn't seem likely.

The film will make money in the following ways:

It will induce Christmas DVD sales. Mormons will buy a lot of these to send to friends and family.

This will be the easiest to document, but I would think the DVD sales alone will make a nice profit over production and distribution costs.

Secondly, the film may temporarily slow the leaving of some individuals/families that are tithe payers. Though impossible for an outsider to document, this could be a significant amount of money.

Additionally, this may also be a laundering operation from the standpoint that LDS Inc would be transferring production costs to the people they want to get it. For example…and I have nothing to back this….the consultation fees on this film may outnumber the production and distribution costs a hundred fold.

This would be on top of the undoubted nepotism that would have gone into the production of the project.

If someone gives me a DVD of Meet the Mormons, I am going to ask if I could exchange it for a fruit cake from last year.

baneberry Wrote:
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> If someone gives me a DVD of Meet the Mormons, I
> am going to ask if I could exchange it for a fruit
> cake from last year.


I'll be prepared with this:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Book-Abraham-Investigating/dp/0971744319

and the simple challenge: I'll watch your video if you'll watch mine.

The movie will "make money" no matter what because production costs were covered by tithing.

The more interesting question for me is to see how many theaters will continue showing the movie and for how long.

I would argue that the goal of this movie is not necessarily to make a profit at all. Sure, they would like to cover their production costs.

The main purpose of this movie is inoculation of the membership. This movie helps them retain membership and tithing revenue. That's the REAL money maker.

The church brand has been suffering and that can wear on the members morale. This movie is uplifting to the members (look how important we are, look how diverse our membership is). It gets them excited about what they are doing and ready to do more, even though nothing material will change - just like a company morale event.

Looking again at TSCC strategy, one of the key elements was they asked for members to request that it be shown in their area. The key is that they didn't ask the members to call the local movie theater, but that they sent the request to the movie website so TSCC and the distributor could book the theater. This let them gauge the interest of the members in that area.

I'm not in that business, but most likely they guaranteed a certain amount to the local theater for a minimum number of days, and then had local states and Mormon sponsors buy up the tickets.

Because they head this information, the pencil pushers made the decisions on where to book the screens.

It will be interesting to see how next week goes.