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Author
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Topic: Slump? What Slump? (Yahoo News article)
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Mike Blakesley
Film God
Posts: 12767
From: Forsyth, Montana
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 07-13-2005 02:53 PM
Finally, an article that gives a real picture of what's happening in the industry. Too bad this isn't mainstream media. The other cool thing about it is, I'm in it! ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Yahoo News article
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Slump? What Slump? By Joal Ryan
Wed Jun 29, 6:29 PM ET
The Roxy Theatre in Forsyth, Montana, turns 75 in September. The single-screen movie house has withstood TV, VCRs, cable, videogames, DVDs--and the recent flood of headlines about slumps, losing streaks and decline.
Says Mike Blakesley, who has owned the Roxy since 1979: "I think people are always going to want to get out of their house."
And people are getting out of the house. Through Sunday, $4.2 billion worth of movie tickets had been sold this year at U.S. theaters like the Roxy, according to the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. One 2005 release, Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith, has passed the blockbuster test, with $350 million-plus in the coffers; seven others have hit the $100 million benchmark, including The Pacifier, a critically trashed family comedy starring the heretofore left-for-box-office-dead Vin Diesel. Wednesday brings War of the Worlds, which thanks to Tom Cruise's recent unfettered ways, is one film likely on even the most dispassionate consumer's radar.
"Is there a problem?" says David Poland, editor of MovieCityNews.com. "I don't see a problem."
Poland is not alone--it only seems like he is. A Nexis article search for the words "box office" and "slump" turns up more results from the past 90 days (808) than the magic combo of "Paris Hilton" and "burger" (795). Asked the Salt Lake Tribune ominously on Sunday: "A hundred years of moviegoing--but will there be 100 more?" (The column's less-ominous answer: Probably.)
Fueling the headlines are the numbers. Ticket revenue down about 5 percent from last year. Actual attendance down about 9 percent. Box office down for what is said to be a record 18 weekends in a row.
But are the numbers really cause for an all-hands-on-deck alarm? After all, while the box office has been down for 18 straight weekends, as widely reported Monday, that's not the same as 18 straight weeks. According to Exhibitor Relations, in two of the last 18 weeks, the box office has actually been up, thanks to the drawing power of The Ring Two and Revenge of the Sith.
Then there's the larger matter of the 2005 box office being down when compared to 2004, a year that featured the incomparable The Passion of the Christ. Take out the $370 million earned by Mel Gibson's Biblical epic, and 2005 is in the black. It's an old network TV trick, to be sure--finding the most favorable comparison, usually by ignoring the least favorable comparison--but it isn't necessarily a bad trick. Blakesley, for one, says The Passion brought in a "whole lot of people we [hadn't seen] in years"--or since. The movie, was in the words of Exhibitor Relations' Paul Dergarabedian, "a total anomaly."
So, why all the hand-wringing over "a total anomaly?" Because the movies are no good, ticket prices are too high, theater floors are too sticky, potential moviegoers are too busy nesting and DVDs are better. Or so go the cultural sea-change theories--make that, the familiar cultural sea-change theories.
"Many of the complaints or reasons for the slump are things we've been hearing for years," says Brandon Gray of BoxOfficeMojo.com.
Or as Poland puts it: "We're the chattering class. We chatter when we have a chance." And the unexamined numbers are giving us a chance, he says, to vent years' worth of grievances against popcorn prices and the like.
If Oliver Stone were writing a screenplay based on the presumed death of the movie theater, the chief culprit would be the DVD. The skinny little disc is the most commonly cited anecdotal reason as to why fewer bodies are being parked at the multiplex. But Scott Hettrick, editor-in-chief of the monthly trade magazine DVD Exclusive, isn't buying it.
"DVDs have been out for eight years. Last year was a record year at the box office," Hettrick says. "It's not as if in the last eight months everyone in the country woke up and decided to stop going to the movies and watch DVDs."
Indeed, DVD growth, though strong, is flattening. Revenue from sales and rentals is expected to be up about 20 percent this year over 2004, per Hettrick. Compare that to 2002, when the format mushroomed by 70.6 percent over the previous year. The year 2002 also happened to be Hollywood's best year attendance-wise at the box office since the 1950s.
And yet the notion of the DVD as a movie-killer persists. A recent Associated Press/AOL poll said that 73 percent of adults prefer DVDs to movies. The accompanying AP article quotes two adults, both in their mid-30s, saying they'd rather stay home than go out. What the article doesn't state is that, DVDs or no, adults in their mid-30s typically make for lousy moviegoers. In the boom year of 2002, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, only 17 percent of tickets were purchased by mortgage- and kid-saddled thirtysomethings.
If DVDs are a red herring, then something definitely is ailing the movie studios this year.
"More than anything, it's the movies," says Blakesley. "I just don't think anything has that 'Wow' factor that makes them want to go more than once."
If moviegoers aren't overwhelmed with buzz films, then Poland might argue, imagine how movie journalists feel. "There's been no shocking success story. There's been no shocking failure," he says. In lieu of sexy movies, there has been the sexy storyline: The Death of the Movie Business as We Know It.
"The whole thing," Poland says, "has become overblown."
Not even a reliable source like Dergarabedian can decide if what Hollywood is going through should be called a slump. In an interview, he goes from saying 2005 is basically even with 2004, once The Passion is subtracted from the equation, to dropping the "S" word when talking about recent downward-trending weekend business, to finally urging that it's time to stop looking at "the so-called slump."
The bottom line for Dergarabedian: "People are going to the movies."
If The Wedding Crashers, Peter Jackson's King Kong and the new Harry Potter -- all frequently cited as the year's remaining best bets--don't boost the box office to 2004 levels, then to Poland, that's like a .370 hitter in baseball who slips to .340 -- "You're still having a great year."
To Blakesley, who bought the Roxy at the dawn of the home-video era, he's heard it all--and braved it all--before.
"When that [video] first happened, there was a lot of gloom and doom talk...It's just been one of those things," Blakesley says. "We always bounce back."
Then, spoken by a man who might have seen one too many nay-saying headline, Blakesley adds: "Maybe I'm a little bit too confident."
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 07-13-2005 09:54 PM
Yeah, those year by year comparisons are a bunch of bullshit due to ticket price inflation. Hollywood and the dolts reporting on Hollywood in the press don't count actual numbers of tickets sold.
These year by year gross dollars figures are about as reliable for tracking industry health as the United States' phoney baloney unemployment rate. For those who don't know, our unemployment rate only calculates the percentage of Americans currently receiving unemployment benefits. If their benefits run out after so many weeks, but they still don't have a job, the government no longer counts them among the unemployed anyway. MORONS!!!!
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) ![[Confused]](confused.gif) ![[uhoh]](graemlins/uhoh.gif)
Anyway, the overall quality of films from major studios in recent years really sucks ass compared to major studio output a decade ago. I'm surprised as many Americans are going to the movies with all the dumbass TV series remakes, sequels and other shit we feel like we've already seen many times before.
Some of this really low quality is now showing up in a new "slump" people are characterizing in DVD sales. The number of American homes owning DVD players is nearing 80%. Many of these people, if they're into buying DVD movies, are completing their collections with most of their favorites. I know I have nearly all of mine on DVD. And over the past year I've purchased a mere handful of DVDs, with half of them not being movies (concert and music video DVDs instead).
I guess it will take the studios losing money in the home market to start re-thinking their feature film strategies.
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