Filmmaker Boots Riley, the creative force behind Sorry to Bother You and the Prime Video series I’m a Virgo, has been in the spotlight following the release of his star-studded absurdist comedy feature, I Love Boosters.

Starring Keke Palmer, Demi Moore, LaKeith Stanfield, and Naomi Ackie, I Love Boosters premiered at SXSW before hitting theaters nationwide via NEON. But while riding the wave of his latest cinematic release, Riley took to X to spark a vital conversation about film distribution, data tracking, and systemic bias in Hollywood analytics.

His viral post focused on a critical blind spot in standard industry reporting: the Caribbean theatrical market. “There are 750 screens in the film market labeled ‘the Caribbean.’ A majority Black audience and Black-led films do well there. Not tracked by Box Office Mojo or The Numbers. Should b under international… The amount that could be added to a Black-led film by tracking Caribbean numbers might change the game for many films,” Riley wrote.

There are 750 screens in the film market labeled "the Caribbean". A majority Black audience and Black-led films do well there.

Not tracked by Box Office Mojo or The Numbers. Should b under international

If tracked, it'd prove Black-led casts to be more lucrative & we'd get more

— Boots Riley (@BootsRiley) September 14, 2026

He later clarified his screen count, writing, “Mistake on the screen count above, it’s about 450-500 screens that aren’t counted. Trinidad & Tobago is sometimes counted as its own thing, and of course PR is domestic. Still could be a HUGE difference for a Black-led cast.”

Industry aggregators like Box Office Mojo and The Numbers rely on standardized distribution reports provided by data collection services like Comscore, formerly Rentrak, and the Motion Picture Association. Under standard industry classification, the domestic North American market includes the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with box office tracking automatically capturing ticket sales from Puerto Rico and the USVI as part of domestic grosses.

The international market, by contrast, covers independent Caribbean nations such as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Bahamas, Aruba, and the Dominican Republic. While major Hollywood studios occasionally submit international ticket sales for massive wide-release blockbusters in these nations, indie, mid-budget, and studio-released Black-led films rarely have their Caribbean grosses tracked or published on public box office databases.

The dominant exhibition footprint in the region belongs to Caribbean Cinemas, a private chain operating roughly 500 screens across 14 territories. Factor in local independent exhibitors, such as Palace Cineplex in Jamaica or standalone cinemas across the Lesser and Greater Antilles, and there are roughly 450 to 500 screens operating outside the domestic tracking loop across the independent Caribbean.

To further understand the scale of that number, it helps to consider how indie and mid-budget movies are typically evaluated in Hollywood. When Riley’s debut feature, Sorry to Bother You, opened in wide release in 2018, it premiered on roughly 800 screens nationwide, while a studio-backed wide release for a mid-budget indie or mid-range studio film often ranges between 1,500 and 2,500 screens.

An uncounted 450 to 500 screens represents a 15% to 25% expansion on an average mid-budget wide release, and more than a 50% increase in potential screen real estate for a platformed indie release like I Love Boosters. If a Black-led film plays across 300 to 500 untracked screens in majority-Black Caribbean markets where demand is high, hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of dollars in revenue simply vanish from the official box office record.

That gap matters because, in Hollywood, data dictates greenlights. Studio executives and financiers make decisions about funding, distribution budgets, and international appeal using tracking platforms like Box Office Mojo, and if ticket sales from the Caribbean remain uncounted, it reinforces a persistent, harmful Hollywood myth: that Black-led cinema does not travel or perform well internationally.

For decades, Black directors, writers, and producers have fought against the executive narrative that films featuring majority-Black casts lack commercial viability outside North America, and by failing to publicly track a regional international market that actively consumes Black cinema, analytics platforms underreport global interest in Black stories. The gap also affects how long a film stays in theaters in the first place, since box office success is heavily judged on opening weekend per-screen averages.

A strong per-screen average signals to theater owners that a movie deserves to hold onto its screens for a second and third week, and capturing high-performing Caribbean screens would boost opening totals, giving Black-led films better leverage to stay in theaters longer.

That, in turn, shapes what comes next: when a film completes its theatrical run, its final recorded box office gross sets the baseline for what a director or producer can ask for on their next project, and capturing untracked international revenue gives filmmakers tangible proof of profitability, making it easier to secure higher production budgets and broader international distribution agreements down the line.

While Puerto Rico and the USVI are included in domestic totals, hundreds of screens across the independent Caribbean remain functionally invisible on public leaderboards. Standardizing and publishing Caribbean theatrical grosses wouldn’t just fix a reporting oversight; it would provide the industry with an accurate reflection of the global commercial power of Black-led cinema.

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