How is it that movie box office numbers for the weekend are announced before the weekend is over? “These box-office ‘results’ released over the weekend are simply a studio’s own estimate of its movie’s weekend performance. Distribution executives arise at dawn on Sunday mornings to crunch their numbers and report them to the media. Making a weekend projection on a Sunday morning is quite similar to how the media call political elections when they have the results of only a handful of precincts: You compare the numbers you have against some past results to make an educated guess.”