Posted on 12/10/2007 3:28:24 AM PST by abb
Hollywood is counting on the impending arrival of a naughty chipmunk, a treasure hunter and Will Smith to reverse a lingering box office malaise that deepened over the weekend with disappointing sales for The Golden Compass.
The movie business is running into the 2007 home stretch with a serious limp. Measured in dollars, ticket sales for the crucial holiday season, which began Nov. 2, are down 6 percent through Sunday compared with last year, according to the box-office tracking company Media by Numbers. Attendance, meanwhile, is off by more than 10 percent.
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Through summers end the box-office story was a much happier one for the studios as films like 300, The Simpsons Movie and the latest chapter of Pirates of the Caribbean helped send attendance up 3 percent and ticket sales up 7 percent. But those gains have been whittled away as the mediocre holiday ticket sales have followed a lackluster September and October, when a glut of war-theme movies bombed, and high-wattage stars like Tom Cruise and Ben Stiller drew yawns. Of the past 12 weekends only one delivered an uptick in year-on-year ticket sales, courtesy of American Gangster and Bee Movie.
The holiday season could still rebound. Several high-profile pictures roll out in coming weeks, including a family movie from Fox (Alvin and the Chipmunks) and a big-budget sequel from Walt Disney (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, starring Nicolas Cage). Warner Brothers hopes Mr. Smith will turn I Am Legend into a blockbuster.
snip
It got more like a punch in the face from The Golden Compass. After mixed reviews and threats of a boycott by religious groups, that film sold $26.1 million worth of tickets at theaters in the United States and Canada in its first three days of release.
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
Much more realistic.
This is better than I dared hope. The studio was talking it down, and saying they were hoping for $30 to $40 Million. They did not even make that reduced figure.
This should be a wake-up call to Hollywood that people take attempts to tamper with their children's religious beliefs seriously. Of course it will not.
They will do like the NY Times is doing here, and speculate about some generalized malaise in the movie industry instead of focusing on the fact that their agenda driven movies Rendition, Lions for Lambs, Redacted, The Golden Compass etc, have actively driven away the viewing public. There are limits to what they can get away with. No child wants to hear that.
Oh well, with war comes bombs.
I guess at some point Hollywood and the media will have a “come to Jesus moment” (Ahem, no pun intended) and stop their incessant indulgence in their own personal fantasies and feelings. A business can’t really survive for long if it regards it’s consumers as ignorant rubes to be hectored and inculcated with “correct thinking”.
Then again, the Liberal faithful have never been anything other than arrogant and narcissistic, so perhaps they will go down with the ship.
> ... lingering box office malaise ...
People may finally be objecting to 10% of every movie
ticket dollar going to the DNC.
Unlikely, since according to the most recent Kongressional elections over half of the populace votes Democrat anyway.
So sorry it didn’t work out...should have brought it out on Halloween, rather than Christmas.
They’ll never learn.
Typical liberal solution: When sales are down, raise prices. No wonder people are staying away in droves.
Enchanted took in 50 million in it’s first weekend.
YES!!!!!!!
Go see Enchanted.
Unless they’re lying and saying they’re selling more tickets than they actually are...
I mean, I don’t know where they get the stats from or anything. I’m just putting it out there.
It’s The Fall of the Hollywood Traitor movies.
A lot of it is due to ticket price inflation, plus the increasing number of high-def big-screen TVs in homes
Why should I spend $40 - $50 bucks taking my family to the movies when I can rent a movie for $3?
We really liked 'Enchanted' too! A fun time at the movies...
Excellent kid-friendly movie. Saw it with my daughters this weekend
"Morgan!! Morgan!!"
It still freaks me out
I’m already confused by the ads for “I Am Legend”. He’s been the last guy on earth for 3 years, yet he has gasoline for his car and, it appears, electricity?
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