Posted on 12/24/2005 4:09:09 PM PST by Daralundy
The slump, now three years running, prompts the industry to ask: 'What's wrong with the movies?'
LOS ANGELES - Hollywood's year-ending good news is that moviegoers are opening hearts and pocketbooks for "King Kong" - more than $60 million on its debut weekend and counting.
The bad news is that audiences did not exactly go ape over the rest of 2005's cinema offerings, making this the third straight year of decline in Hollywood ticket sales - the first such stretch of bad news in 40 years. Because of the continued falloff - sales are down 12.6 percent from 2002 - a growing number of analysts wonder if America's movie habits are changing permanently.
"The industry has to consider whether or not American audiences are sending a message about the quality of the movies they are getting - or just the way and the place in which they get them," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, a firm that analyzes box-office trends. "You can bet that producers, writers, directors, and studio heads are all huddling intensely to consider what this means and change their behavior to keep it from continuing."
It could just be a continued shift away from multiplexes toward Blockbuster, Netflix, and other home-viewing options, Mr. Dergarabedian and others say.
In this scenario, consumers are changing their movie-viewing habits because of multiple complaints related to theater-going: soaring ticket costs, high parking and candy-concession prices, and, perhaps, decreased enjoyment of the movie-house experience because of unruly audiences and growing numbers of on-screen ads.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
They don't know "cowboys" from "sheep herders."
Who cares, the most important things to the pretend crowd is money and patting each other on the back with one hand while stabbing with the other.
I think it is a good idea. I enjoy watching movies but hate the theater experience. By the time the film comes out on DVD I've heard too many spoilers about it. Home theater systems are the way to go and Hollywood should encourage DVDs by releasing them at the same time as the theatrical release.
Not for the movie theatres I suspect though.
Well, they'll have the opportunity to get all the sucking out of the way at once, instead of dragging it out over months, ending up in those sad little $5.99 bins at WallyWorld.
There are a lot of great movies released pretty much every year, but even more dreck.
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