'Borat' Box Office Conquest May Grow

Did the suits in Hollywood underestimate Borat, the mock Kazakh who proved to be the "king in the castle" at the U.S. box office last weekend? Or was it all a clever marketing ploy?

Borat -- or rather his movie, "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" -- surprised veteran box-office watchers by generating $26.4 million in ticket sales last weekend. The crude and satirical mockumentary starring British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen outdistanced other new releases, including family films "The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause" ($20 million) and "Flushed Away" ($19.1 million).

As Borat would say: Ni-iice.

But "Borat" most likely could have been even more glorious -- because Twentieth Century Fox, which released the film, limited its distribution. The studio opened the movie in just 837 theaters, a paltry number in an age when the biggest, most hyped films typically open on thousands of screens. "Santa Clause 3," for example, was in 3,458 theaters and "Flushed" was in 3,707.

Which raises two possibilities: that Fox miscalculated, low-balling "Borat's" box-office prospects and thus scrimping on the number of opening-week screens; or that the studio purposely underplayed it, hoping to build word-of-mouth buzz to propel the film as it expands to the hinterlands this weekend.

Fox says the latter. But not everyone is so sure.

At the heart of this is the art of distribution, a critical but obscure part of movie marketing. Studio distributors such as Fox place movies in theaters through negotiations with theater owners. But figuring out the optimum number of screens can be a crapshoot, since neither theater owners nor filmmakers know how a new movie will be received. The number of screens depends on many factors, such as the presence (or absence) of big-name stars, a familiar story or characters, the amount of publicity and advertising behind a film and sometimes just gut feel. Demographic and regional factors also come into play. In all, "it's really just a guess," said Douglas Gomery, a retired film-studies professor who has written 20 books on the movie and media industries. "They really don't know."

"Borat" was a particularly difficult film for Fox to peg, said Bruce Snyder, Fox's president of distribution. Although the character had a cult following on HBO's "Da Ali G Show" and Cohen promoted the movie relentlessly for weeks, the "Candid Camera"-meets-"Jackass" style didn't quite fit traditional comic genres. "It's not a conventional movie," Snyder said. "You can't run an ad comparing it to anything. . . . The best tool we had was the movie itself."

So less became more. Snyder said Fox chose to limit the number of theaters, concentrating on big cities and skipping smaller towns, where awareness of the film was lower and R-rated comedies traditionally fare poorly. The studio hoped that packed, happy audiences would walk away talking about the movie. Or as Snyder put it: "We were looking to create an infectious, communal experience."

That might be Hollywood spin, suggested Brandon Gray, who runs Box Office Mojo, an online publication that analyzes the film market. Gray said Fox initially planned to open "Borat" in more than 2,000 theaters but cut back its release schedule and ad campaign when research showed the film tracking well only among young men. He also said the studio was leery of reading too much into the big buzz "Borat" was getting on the Internet, fearing it might turn out to be another "Snakes on a Plane" -- that is, talked about but modestly attended.

The first weekend's results shocked the studio, said Gray, adding: "If they had known it was going to do that much business, they would have released it differently."

Snyder suggested the studio would have released "Borat" much wider if it had thought the movie lacked "legs," or longer-term popularity. But "Borat" might have legs to spare. As it expands to 2,400 screens, Snyder said he can see a wave building.

"Our plan wasn't just to put it in the best possible light for opening weekend, but for its lifetime," he said. "The plan is working perfectly."