Posted on 01/24/2006 12:38:35 PM PST by Millee
This is a make-or-break year for Hollywood.
“One down year is an anomaly, but two could be a trend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box office-tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. “This year is really a turning point.”
Keenly aware of the 7% drop in movie attendance in 2005, studio executives are pinning their hopes on a better slate of films to draw consumers back to the multiplex. But industry watchers say the business has more far-reaching problems that a few good films can’t necessarily fix as in-control consumers turn to entertainment alternatives like Netflix, the Internet and on-demand programming.
Box office down With box office down and costs up -- the average Hollywood film now costs about $65 million to produce and another $35 million for prints and advertising—this could well be a watershed year as executives are forced to rethink some of the traditional tenets of the business. Among them: cinemas getting first crack at releases; top acting talent getting sweetheart deals; and rethinking the hallowed concept of tent-pole movies.
Moreover, pundits predict that studio marketing dollars will continue to migrate away from TV and toward the Internet, grassroots events and guerrilla marketing.
(Excerpt) Read more at adage.com ...
Did you ever see "Jeepers Creepers"?
I was screaming
RUN OVER HIM AGAIN
RUN OVER HIM AGAIN ;P
LOL!
Are you sure were not related?
We are now long lost FR-sisters ;P
Did you watch House of Wax?
Let me sleep on it.
It's really simple. The technology has improved to the point where people don't see the added value over watching the movie in their home. Find a way to sell the movie at a theatre price to people in their homes.
In my case, it is too much trouble to try and locate a babysitter so I can go to a theatre. It's much easier just to wait until it comes out on DVD. That said, I would gladly pay $20 for my wife and I to be able to legally watch a first-run movie at home.
I was reading Entertainment Weekly's 2006 preview issue yesterday, and for the first time perhaps ever, there's not a single new movie, television show or cd that I'm excited about. The Da Vinci Code with a woefully miscast Tom Hanks? Yawn. Mission Impossible III with the couch-jumping Scientologist? Hahaha, right. Oliver Stone's take on 9/11? Not if you friggin' paid me. Plus, it's an election year, so celebrities will be unable to keep themselves from injecting their opinions on foreign policy, hysterically, whenever they can. I see the box office definitely going further downhill.
That was funny.
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