Intro-bop

Hello and welcome to boxofficeprophets.com. My name is David and I'll be your host for this bit of educational propaganda. We recognize that our site can be a bit overwhelming for first time visitors so we wanted to take this opportunity to explain who we are and what we are doing to make you feel a bit more comfortable.

Box Office Prophets aka BOP is a comprehensive movie site which attempts to fill the needs of a wide cross section of web surfers with one little bookmark. What? You haven't bookmarked us yet? Hit control-D immediately; otherwise, you'll be subjected to a Glitter/On the Line double feature until you are driven so insane by the "acting" in the movies that you give in to temptation and gouge out your eyeballs. Bookmarked us now? That's better.

(Sorry to have to pull out the Mariah Carrey threat so early in our relationship but I swear that it hurt me as much as it hurt you)

As I was saying before those oh so pretty yet ever so elusive shiny things distracted me, BOP is a meta-site combining the features of many other popular movie sites in one convenient location. We offer the convenience of a fully crafted release schedule with synopsis pages and other information for upcoming releases in a manner similar to what you would see on popular websites such as FilmReleases.com and UpcomingMovies.com. Note that if you click on the words above, you will open new windows to visit these other sites if you have never seen them before. We will do this throughout our description pages.

I acknowledge that it's a bit unusual to link to other websites who do the same type of thing as you but this underscores two points about the folks here at BOP. First, we do not feel we are in competition with anyone. People visit tons of websites to accumulate as much as information as they can these days so there's no point in acting like we aren't aware that there are other places out there who offer you similar substance to what we offer you. That would insult your intelligence and ignore the beauty of the open source world the internet is building.

Second, we want you to shop around because we have confidence in our pages here. We feel that seeing what else is out there will make you appreciate what we do that much more because we have worked hard to create our little niche of the movie information universe. You might be able to find other sites with better descriptions on some films or a hot news item which may or may not be from the hairdresser of a star actor involved in the production but we don't think you'll find a page that more easily puts you in touch with all of the information you might want about that film. This is why we include links to other places on each of our synopsis pages. We want you to use our pages at BOP as a jumping off point in your search for information about movies. If we don't have the information you need, we want to be able to get you to someone who does in a timely manner.

We also would like to give you a piece of cake and a warm glass of milk with each page listing but modern technology is sorely behind what was promised to us in the 1960s by Arthur C. Clarke and Gene Roddenberry. Please accept the binary equivalent of moist chocolate slab cake with my most sincere apologies for not being able to more appropriately replicate the real mccoy.

Anyway, in addition to what we feel is one of the most comprehensive release schedule sections on the web (and one we strive to make the most accurate one as we scour for changes every few hours), we also have a section for movie trailers that is without question one of the ten largest out there. As soon as there is a teaser on the web, we have it added to the site. Other places such as Movie-List.com and The Trailer Park do a fantastic job of this as well but we try to offer you similar performance to these fine locations in our one-stop shopping experience.

We also take the time each year to poll the thirty five people on our staff at BOP and ask them to vote for their favorite movies, acting performances and the like so that we can give in to peer pressure and have our own movie awards. The 2002 Calvins mark our fourth incarnation of this process in some fashion or another...and hopefully our last name. Third time is a charm, right? Since you really can't have awards without a demonstration that the people involved have some semblance of taste, we also do movie reviews, dvd reviews and to make ourselves stand out from the crowd a bit, we even do trailer reviews. We feel that with marketing so key to the success of a project in today's market and internet users so quick to exclaim 'Film X is gonna rule! or 'Film X is gonna suck the big Jar Jar!' about a movie after seeing exactly 30 seconds of footage, it's important to offer our own opinions about the success or failure of each attempt. Such methodology might not be conventional but it's clearly a valid thought process and one I'm glad to see catching on with some other sites. After all, we exist to discuss movies so there is no topic from the time the filming begins to the film has been launched on video that we want to ignore.

Finally, we come to the backbone of BOP, movie analysis and the databases. Please note that I hired the staff here so I am wildly biased about their abilities but still, I mean it with every fiber of my being when I say the following. This group can bring it. Other sites such as BoxOfficeGuru.com, BoxOfficeMojo.com and even the venerable Marty Grove certainly offer unique input and analysis but when it comes to the overall package, BOP has it all. We have at least one weekend forecast each week and unique to our site, we often do more so that you the viewer get different perspectives on the same film. In addition, we are also the only site to do mathematical extrapolation on Saturday to give an expected top 10 for the following day. Not only do we do this each weekend but the success rate of the calculations often approaches 95%. Just to drive home the point that we want to be first on your list of weekend film analysis, our Sunday wrap-up simultaneously manages to be the most comprehensive AND the first one to update among the major sites. You will often see our Sunday wrap-up uploaded by 1:00 EST yet it will still manage to be all-inclusive with studio graphs, smaller film release numbers and an easy-to-read table filled with all the current data. If you have no other reason to visit the site, our Sunday update alone is worth a look because it's that good.

From there, we have only the databases to discuss. These are the backbone of our site and allow us the ability to do so many of the things that make your visit an enjoyable experience. We have a video rental database that is one of the most frequently updated and carefully maintained on the web. It offers a quick list of the top 100 video releases of all-time on the main page and a search engine which will offer invaluable data about recent video releases. We have discovered that this market is an excellent way to forecast the rising popularity of stars who haven't had their breakthrough film yet but are just the one great project away from a blockbuster opening weekend. Also, keeping up with video data is a great way to learn which films find a second life outside of theaters. This is often a great way to predict the next big franchise. For instance, many were shocked when American Pie 2 had an opening weekend that was 150% larger than the original but those of us who followed the video market knew. We had watched American Pie earn $68.7 million and (at the time) make the top 100 for video rentals. Knowing how popular the brand is can be half the battle in forecasting future results.

And then there's the historical box office database. Originally created by two members of our staff when they undertook the laborious task of going through old magazines and newspaper articles to find weekend numbers for films, their work has now taken on a life of its own. Updated by no fewer than eight different people throughout the month, our historical box office database is the most comprehensive free utility of its kind on the internet and we are understandably proud of it. In fact, we are in many ways like parents watching our child grow up and become something much different than we had expected but also much better than we had ever hoped.

There is basically nothing we don't track about films these days. A simple search of a movie will offer the reader a wealth of information such as opening weekend performance, final box office tally, debut position in the top 100, highest position reached, date of release, distributing studio and so much more that I run the risk of boring you tears just describing it. Err, is it too late for that? We also maintain the database on a daily basis to make certain that the numbers are accurate and we are in the process of incorporating even more robust functionality. By the time we're done, there won't be a question about a movie's box office performance that our search engine can't answer for you and we offer this information free of charge and with warmth in our hearts. If you are interested in the financial side of a movie's performance, you already have a special place in our heart anyway so anything we can do to heighten your experience is just a friend's way of helping out another friend.

So now you have an overview of what we do here at BOP. I'm certain that you still have specific questions about each of the sections so please click any of the appropriate links listed above and replicated just below in order to get a more detailed tutorial of the various sections. Also, if you have a comment, idea or suggestion, feel free to email us at staff@boxofficeprophets.com. Each one of our pages has this address linked at the bottom and we do this for a reason. We welcome your feedback and want to hear ideas on how to enhance your experience. Please keep in mind that due to the volume of email we receive, we can't reply to each and every email but I can assure you that they are all read and given due consideration. Also note that we follow the theory of enforced karma around here so a kind word receives a warm thought and a hostile tone merits a savage beating in reply. I just want to be honest that we firmly believe in tit for tat. For trading purposes, I own the world's largest supply of tat. As you might imagine, I'm a rather happy man.

Anyway, that's the tour. Thanks for checking us out and make sure to click all the buttons on the toolbar. Once you get used to what we do in each portion of BOP, I think you will find us to be a wonderful resource for ALL your movie needs.