Every opening weekend, box office stories quote a letter grade: an A−, a B+, a D+. It comes from CinemaScore, and it has become one of the most-quoted numbers in the business. Here is what it is, how it is collected, and what it has said about eight films we covered this fall.
What CinemaScore Is
According to Wikipedia, CinemaScore is a Las Vegas-based market research firm founded by Ed Mintz in 1978. It began polling audiences in 1979 and became a studio tool after 20th Century Fox approached the company in 1989.
How it works, per the same page:
- Who is asked: opening-day audiences, who are handed a survey card at the theater.
- How many: about 400 cards per film. CinemaScore estimates a 65% response rate and a 6% margin of error.
- Where: representatives in five randomly chosen cities each Friday, drawn from a network across about 25 large North American cities.
- Which films: usually only those opening on more than 1,500 screens, which is why a limited release often has no grade.
- The grade: the average of responses, reported from A+ to F, broken down by gender and by age. Studios get the data around 11 p.m. Pacific on opening night. The letter is public. The detailed breakdown is not.
Mintz's own rule of thumb, as the page reports it, is that A's are generally good, B's are shaky and C's are bad.
What It Cannot Tell You
- It is a self-selected audience. Opening-night crowds are mostly people who chose to buy a ticket right away, so the sample is not the general public.
- It is small. About 400 cards is enough for a grade, not for fine distinctions between a B and a B+.
- It is hard to verify. Because the detailed data is proprietary, outsiders cannot check it.
- Genre matters. The same page notes that horror films consistently score lower. A B− for a horror film is not the same signal as a B− for a family comedy.
Eight 2026 Films
We collected the grades from each film's Wikipedia page, as in our earlier pieces, along with what happened next.
| Film | CinemaScore | What followed |
|---|---|---|
| Wildwood | A | Opened third with $11.0 million. 100% on Rotten Tomatoes |
| Clayface | A− | Opened at number one with about $24 million. Second weekend down 57% (details) |
| Obsession | A− | Second weekend rose 39%. Domestic total about 15 times its opening |
| Resident Evil | B+ | Second weekend down 61%. Total about 2.6 times its opening |
| Backrooms | B− | Total about 2.4 times its opening |
| Scream 7 | B− | Second weekend down 74%. Total about 1.9 times its opening |
| Verity | C+ | Opened at number one, second weekend down 63% |
| Other Mommy | D+ | Second weekend down 70% |
Among the films whose runs have played out, the grades broadly track staying power: Obsession (A−) kept growing, Resident Evil (B+) ran about 2.6 times its opening, and the C+ and D+ films fell 63% and 70% in their second weekends. Scream 7 is the exception worth noting: its B− came with the steepest second-weekend drop of the group, 74%. Sequels with a built-in fan base often open big and fall fast, a reminder that no single number explains a run. We explored this in our analysis of five 2026 horror films.
Two cautions apply to that table. First, the films are in different genres and opened in different weeks against different competition. Second, Clayface's A− held up reasonably: its second weekend fell 57%, a smaller drop than the B+, C+ and D+ films, though not as small as Wildwood's A (down 39%).
What the Industry Data Says
The Wikipedia article cites revenue multiples that point the same way: 4.8 for A+ films and 3.6 for A films from 2004 to 2014, and it says C-rated films earned about 2.5 times their opening weekend. Those figures come from one dated analysis, and the page itself carries notes that some of its numbers may be out of date.
Editorial Take: Use CinemaScore for the one thing it does well: it is the earliest honest signal of whether the people who wanted to see a film liked it, and it arrives before the second weekend can confirm it. Do not use it to compare films across genres, and do not read it as a quality rating. A critic's score tells you what an expert thought. The audience grade tells you whether the crowd that showed up will send friends the following week, and that is what decides whether a film keeps its theaters. Clayface was the cleanest test of the idea this fall, and its 57% second-weekend drop landed where an A− would suggest.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CinemaScore? A market research firm that polls opening-night moviegoers and publishes a letter grade from A+ to F for wide releases.
How many people does CinemaScore survey? About 400 per film, according to Wikipedia, which also gives a 6% margin of error.
Is CinemaScore the same as Rotten Tomatoes? No. Rotten Tomatoes aggregates critics' reviews, while CinemaScore reports what opening-night audiences said.
Why do horror films get lower grades? Wikipedia reports that horror films consistently score lower, so grades are best compared within a genre.
Does a high CinemaScore mean a film will make money? Not by itself. It is associated with a longer run at the box office, but the budget and the opening decide the rest.
Why does my film have no CinemaScore? CinemaScore usually polls only films opening on more than 1,500 screens.
CinemaScore details come from the Wikipedia article linked above and can change. Film grades and box office figures come from the pages and articles linked here. Tracking what arrives next across movies, TV, games, music and books at incoming.to.