Editing Box office (section)

{{Short description|Office selling event tickets}}
{{redirect|Booking office|airline booking offices|city ticket office}}
{{for-multi|the publication|BoxOffice (magazine)|the Aja album|Box Office (album)}}
[[File:Ohio Theatre booth.jpg|thumb|Box office at the [[Ohio Theatre (Columbus, Ohio)|Ohio Theatre]] in Columbus, Ohio]]
[[File:box-office-6692.JPG|thumb|Folk festival box office in [[Edmonton]], Alberta]]
[[File:NPHS Performing Arts Center Ticket Window.jpg|thumb|Ticket window at [[North Port High School]] Performing Arts Center]]

A '''box office''' or '''ticket office''' is a place where [[ticket (admission)|tickets]] are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a [[countertop]], through a hole in a wall or window, or at a [[Wicket gate|wicket]]. By extension, the term is frequently used, especially in the context of the [[film industry]], as a [[metonym]] for the amount of business a particular production, such as a film or theatre show, receives. The term is also used to refer to a ticket office at an [[arena]] or a [[stadium]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/box%20office |title=box office |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181005002940/https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/box%20office |archive-date=2018-10-05 |url-status=dead |website=Merriam-Webster}}</ref>

''Box office'' business can be measured in terms of the number of tickets sold or the amount of money raised by ticket sales ([[revenue]]). The projection and analysis of these earnings is greatly important for the creative industries and often a source of interest for fans. This is predominant in the [[Hollywood movie industry]].

To determine if a movie made a profit, it is not correct to directly compare the box office gross with the [[production budget]], because the [[movie theater]] keeps nearly half of the gross on average. The split varies from movie to movie, and the percentage for the distributor is generally higher in early weeks. Usually the distributor gets a percentage of the revenue after first deducting a "house allowance" or "house nut". It is also common that the distributor gets either a percentage of the gross revenue, or a higher percentage of the revenue after deducting the nut, whichever is larger.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution2.htm |title=Entertainment.howstuffworks.com |date=18 September 2000 |access-date=2007-05-06 |archive-date=2007-04-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070423191545/http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/movie-distribution2.htm |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://express.howstuffworks.com/wq-movies1.htm |title=Express.howstuffworks.com |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121029054134/http://express.howstuffworks.com/wq-movies1.htm |archive-date=2012-10-29 |url-status=dead }}</ref> The distributor's share of the box office gross is often referred to as the "distributor rentals".<ref name="Cones">{{cite book |last=Cones |first=John W. |title=The feature film distribution deal: a critical analysis of the single most important film industry agreement |publisher=[[Southern Illinois University Press]] |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-8093-2082-0 |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=EoeJ7VmwnDIC&pg=PA41 41] }}</ref>