When the gritty drama Prisoners received a B+ CinemaScore on its opening night in September, the grade didn't make sense to Warner Bros. So the studio went back to the research firm, which for three decades has surveyed Friday moviegoers, and asked for a recount. By Sunday morning (and in time for media calls), Warner Bros. was reporting an A- CinemaScore.
The unprecedented redo irked rival studios and came at a critical juncture for CinemaScore, whose influential letter grades of moviegoer sentiment have been criticized for relying on outdated polling techniques and too limited a sample. Insiders say CinemaScore even apologized when box-office smash Gravity received an A-, saying it should have polled only 3D showings instead of a 2D-3D mix (Gravity is playing like an A+ movie).
At the same time, box-office tracking service Rentrak and partner Screen Engine have been testing PostTrak, a real-time, in-theater polling service that begins at 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon and runs through a film's second weekend. As Hollywood scrambles to assess moviegoers' shifting habits, PostTrak presents perhaps the biggest challenge ever to CinemaScore, which has been the industry standard for assessing a film's "playability," or whether word of mouth will help or hurt it. For instance, an A+ CinemaScore signaled that The Blind Side and The Help were headed for long and profitable runs. F scores are rare -- Brad Pitt's violent crime drama Killing Them Softly joined the club last year -- and, in fact, anything in the C range (sorry, Runner Runner) is considered failing (except for horror films).
Ed Mintz founded CinemaScore in 1979 and today runs the company with his son, Harold, out of their suburban Las Vegas home. Every Friday, they dispatch pollsters to about five theaters around the country. By 11 p.m., studio clients who pay between $30,000 and $50,000 for annual subscriptions receive a report listing the grade, along with a demographic breakdown by age and the main reason each moviegoer turned out.