From Box Office to Desktop - Faster

TV and Film research specialists MarketCast and real-time box office tracking experts Rentrak Theatrical have announced an agreement to expand their existing services, offering among other things the ability to forecast a film's opening box office results based on day of release tracking data.

The new relationship will give the companies' clients access to 'unprecedented levels of box office and audience tracking data and analytic tools'. Currently, estimates of a film's potential on the day of release are made manually and cannot be calculated until late in the evening, and the firms claim that 'in a business where minutes and hours count, this feature will provide significant advantages for Rentrak's clients'.

MarketCast's movie marketing and research clients will receive access to their pre-release audience tracking reports via a secure web application, developed for MarketCast by Rentrak. This application also incorporates elements of Rentrak's vast box office and filmography data libraries, and will allow clients to customize, run ad hoc reports, and mine MarketCast's historical archives.

According to Ron Giambra, senior vice president at Rentrak, 'The alliance between Rentrak and MarketCast has created a new entertainment industry information powerhouse that merges the best of the two companies' strengths: MarketCast's proven analytical methodology, advanced statistical expertise and deep movie audience databases; and Rentrak's access to real-time and actionable box office data'.

Henry Shapiro, Vice President and General Manager of MarketCast, says the company is 'pleased to team up with the leader in real-time box office tracking and reporting. Through this partnership, we will provide deeper information and more powerful decision tools for our studio clients'.

MarketCast is a division of Reed Business Information. Rentrak Theatrical is a division of Rentrak Corporation and is the developer of the Essentials(tm) suite of information management products. More details are available via www.rentrak.com

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.