The Numbers (website)

The Numbers (website)
Name	The Numbers
Caption	Box office and film data portal
Type	Box office data, filmography database
Registration	Optional
Language	English
Launch	1997
Owner	Nash Information Services, LLC

The Numbers (website)

The Numbers is an online box office and film data portal providing detailed revenue, production, cast, and release information for motion pictures. It serves researchers, journalists, industry professionals and fans seeking quantitative film performance metrics, production histories, and franchise or talent comparisons. The site aggregates theatrical grosses, home video receipts, and ancillary estimates while cross-referencing studios, distributors, festivals, and talent credits.

Overview

The site compiles box office grosses, production budgets, opening weekend tallies, release schedules, and cast and crew filmographies for films released in markets including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Australia, and more. It lists studio entities such as Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, and 20th Century Studios, and tracks distribution windows for exhibitors like AMC Theatres, Cineworld, and chains active in the United Kingdom and France. For talent and productions the portal links to credits involving companies such as Netflix, Amazon Studios, Hulu, and festivals including Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival. The database is used alongside other industry references like Box Office Mojo, IMDb, and trade publications such as Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and Deadline Hollywood.

History and Development

Founded in 1997 by an independent publisher, the site emerged during the growth of online film resources alongside entities like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic. Early coverage focused on North American theatrical grosses, later expanding to international box office figures, home entertainment, and streaming-era considerations as studios including Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery altered release strategies. Over time, the portal incorporated filmographies for actors linked to agencies and unions such as Creative Artists Agency, William Morris Endeavor, and the Screen Actors Guild, and developed data feeds used by academics at institutions including University of California, Los Angeles and industry analysts at firms like Nielsen.

Data Coverage and Methodology

Data sources cited by the site include studio reports from Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Sony Pictures Releasing, and independent distributors, box office reporting from exhibitors including Cinepolis and Regal Cinemas, and vetted archival records such as those maintained by the British Film Institute and the American Film Institute. Methodological choices address factors like inflation adjustment (using standards familiar to economists at Harvard University and London School of Economics), market share calculations, and currency conversion practices consistent with central banks and agencies like the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank. The portal distinguishes domestic versus international grosses, counts theatrical runs and re-releases, and annotates production budget figures that are often corroborated with studio filings, trade reports from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, and SEC disclosures when parent companies such as Comcast or Sony Corporation publish results.

Features and Services

Key features include per-film detail pages with cast lists referencing performers represented by agencies like United Talent Agency, crew listings for artisans affiliated with guilds such as the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America, franchise trackers for series including Star Wars, James Bond, Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Harry Potter, and timeline visualizations of theatrical runs comparable to charts used by analysts at Deloitte. The site offers comparison tools that let users juxtapose films, franchises, distributors, and talent — useful for studio strategists at Paramount Pictures or festival programmers at Sundance Film Festival. Subscribers can access industry dashboards, downloadable CSV data feeds, and custom research requests employed by journalists at The New York Times, academicians at University of Southern California, and consultants at firms like McKinsey & Company.

Reception and Impact

The portal is cited by mainstream outlets including The New York Times, The Guardian, and BBC News when reporting box office milestones, and is used by scholars examining film economics at universities such as Columbia University and Stanford University. Industry professionals reference its datasets during release planning, rights negotiations, and retrospective performance analyses involving studios like Lionsgate and distributors such as A24. Its franchise trackers and per-territory breakdowns have informed coverage of box office phenomena surrounding releases from Marvel Studios and independent successes spotlighted at Sundance Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival.

Controversies and Criticism

Critics have raised questions about the transparency and sourcing of certain budget and revenue estimates, echoing concerns voiced about comparable services like Box Office Mojo and databases used by outlets such as Variety. Studios and distributors including Walt Disney Studios and Universal Pictures sometimes dispute third-party tallies, leading to debate in forums frequented by professionals from The Hollywood Reporter and analysts at Morning Consult. Academics stressing reproducibility in economic research published at journals tied to Cambridge University Press and Oxford University Press have called for clearer methodological documentation on inflation adjustments, currency conversions, and treatment of streaming revenue. The site has iteratively updated its methodology and added annotations following critiques from trade sources and researchers at institutions like Northwestern University.

Category:Film websites