Hollywood Horror Show: An 18-week Slump
Hollywood is experiencing an unprecedented slump:
Revenues for the top 12 movies came in at $116.5 million, down 16 percent from the same weekend last year, when “Fahrenheit 9/11″ opened as the top movie with $23.9 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
It was the 18th weekend in a row the box office declined, passing a 1985 slump of 17 weekends that had been the longest since analysts began keeping detailed figures on movie grosses.
……Theater revenues have skidded about 7 percent compared to last year. Factoring in higher ticket prices, movie admissions are off 10 percent for the year, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
If the slump continues, Hollywood is on course for a third straight year of declining admissions and its lowest ticket sales since the mid-1990s.
Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette explains it almost perfectly in a cartoon in Business Weak’s July 4 issue; unfortunately it’s not available online or at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Rogers’ home paper. So I’ll have to describe it: An older couple is walking away from the theater. The man is reading a newspaper headlined “Box Office Slump” and asks “I wonder why no one’s going to the movies.” Behind him is the theater’s marquee with the week’s four offerings:
1 - Unoriginal Remake of an Average ’70s Film
2 - Pathetic Adaptation of a Vintage Sitcom
3 - Another (yawn) Comic Book Hero Flick
4 - Revenge of the Really Bad Sequelsand
Coming Soon: 2 Hours of Your Life You’ll Never Get Back
Enough said, except for one omission:
“Injection of the R-Rated Content into PG and PG-13 films”
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UPDATE: Found the cartoon here.
UPDATE 2: This Variety piece (HT Drudge) focuses on the tensions between producers, exhibitors and studios over how quickly DVDs are released after a movie’s theater run has ended. If you’re going to blame the decline in the box office on the idea that people are holding out until the DVD is released, you would have to assume that DVD sales and rentals are increasing significantly. Oops, they aren’t (bold is mine):
Privately, studio execs and filmmakers are wrestling with the traditional strategies. Studios are murmuring that it doesn’t make fiscal sense to shell out enormous marketing costs twice for one film. A closer DVD launch can ride the wave that began with the bigscreen.
Though, as with all booms, the DVD explosion seems to be coming to an end. The format is and will remain the most important source of revenue for studios, but the growth of consumer spending on DVDs is slowing — from a 71% jump between 2001 and 2002 to a more moderate 17.5% this year, according to DVD Exclusive. Much of the new money, though, is coming from the release of TV properties, not films. Absent the tube titles hitting shelves, total DVD growth would likely be in the single digits.
UPDATE 3: Speaking of tensions, the friction between the studios, producers, and PR people on one end, and the media and film critics on the other, is growing quite a bit, based on this Variety piece on the “War of the Worlds” rollout:
Media around the globe have been up in arms about over the restrictions imposed by Paramount and DreamWorks as “War of the Worlds” bowed in Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, London, Marseilles, Madrid and New York.
The publicity backlash points up the perils of day-and-date openings. Overseas journos, accustomed to writing about films that have already opened in the U.S., are being asked to see a film — and then refrain from writing or talking about it for several weeks.
To top it off, they’re meeting the star, but being given limits on the conversation.
The result is day-and-date media hostility.
Given piracy fears and security concerns over Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise, the June 23 N.Y. preempreem featured four-hour security lineups, which caused media grousing.
That was matched by grumbling over the New York print media being shut out of the preem (Variety was one of the few allowed in).
And though studios routinely put an embargo on review dates, Germany’s top film critics association launched an official protest against what it called “a violation of basic constitutional rights” over the studio’s review restrictions.
Alienating your first audience, which happens to be the one that serves partially as a filter to the general public, does not seem like a wise move for an industry trying to stop a decline.
UPDATE 4: The Wall Street Journal, in a Taste section editorial, thinks all we need are heavyhanded ushers to root out the rudeness of theater yakkity-yaks. I don’t think it will be that easy.
UPDATE 5, July 5, 1AM: Make that 19 weeks.
