EXCLUSIVE: We understand that The Quorum, the film tracking and research company founded by former UTA Research Head, David Herrin, has been sold to Greenlight Analytics.
The Quorum is currently being maintained by the team at Greenlight Analytics, led by CEO Bill Skelly. Greenlight Analytics is a start-up with a focus on data analytics in the entertainment sector, the company having investments from Causeway Solutions and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity.
We hear that polling from The Quorum is ongoing, with the data transmitting as internal research for Greenlight Analytics. Greenlight plans to continue producing entertainment research while they assess the future direction of the brand, including its forecasting coverage.
The Quorum was boldly known for providing six-weekend-in-advance tracking projections on movies, and not just as internal reports, but also publishing their findings publicly. This would often lead to studio execs’ losing their hair, and they’d push back on us whenever we ran Quorum projections, and poke holes. However, in the imperfect science of tracking, there were myriad moments when The Quorum was spot-on correct. Exhibit A? Quorum was the first to call last year that Deadpool & Wolverine was destined for a $200M opening, as well as Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes at north of $50M among other forecasts. A lot of studios’ ire stemmed from their want to manage word of mouth in advance, which is understandable in this post Covid, post strikes fickle moviegoing marketplace.
Tracking firms such as NRG typically provide definitive three-weekend box office opening forecasts in advance. Long-lede tracking exists, but only as internal reports to the studios.
Quorum also stood out in how they handled their own movie title comp rubric sans any input from the majors.
Herrin was the architect and co-founder of UTA and Rentrak’s (now ComScore) former PreAct which correlated social media chatter to films’ marketing campaigns up to a year in advance.
Corp Comm strategist Chris Day was also an equity partner in The Quorum alongside Herrin, his share bought out by Greenlight.
Currently, the cadence of Quorum’s reports and whether six-weekend box office forecasts will continue to be measured and reported, are still being evaluated.