Box Office Contracts offer a remarkable opportunity to investors to participate in and earn returns from the movie business. For many years movie moguls, wealthy producers, and investment banks have had exclusive access to investing and trading in film properties while broad public participation from the movie-going public was not possible.

Now that Cantor Exchange has launched Box Office Contracts, individual investors will have access to participate directly in Hollywood’s revenues, while industry financiers will now have access to a free market in which to hedge significant exposure to a single movie.

Cantor Exchange Participants can hand-select movies and buy the futures contracts associated with them in order to participate in their financial success. Conversely, trading Participants are also able to sell futures contracts in those pictures they expect to underperform. Movie production houses can also sell futures contracts in order to hedge positions in movies they have actively financed.

Box Office Contracts value the expected U.S. and Candian movie theater ticket sales (known as Domestic Box Office Receipts, or DBOR) between the first time a film is shown in theaters and the end of the fourth weekend after the film achieves wide release status (on Sunday night if a normal weekend, or Monday night if that Monday is a holiday). This data is tracked and compiled by Rentrak Theatrical or Nielsen EDI, and most of the sales figures are available in real-time to subscribers, and are later published for the public in Variety magazine.

Each individual Box Office Contract for any particular movie represents 1/1,000,000th of the box office. Therefore, a $1,000,000 change in revenues causes a $1.00 change in the value of a contract. For example if the DBOR of a movie is $170 million at the end of the four week determination period, the price of a single unit of the contract associated with that movie will be $170.

There is no need to closeout positions at the end of the four week determination period. Instead, all positions held in that film's contract will automatically be closed at a price that equates to the gross box office of the film during the period. This assures all traders holding positions that the positions will ultimately be liquidated fairly at the contract's stated value.