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 ...
It's so much easier and comfortable to watch a movie in your living room. Perhaps the theaters will go the way of the drive-ins.
They'd be better off asking "What's right?"
"It's so much easier and comfortable to watch a movie in your living room."
Yeah, but you end up with a lot of chewed gum underneath your furniture...yuck!
I went to Blockbuster today to pick up disks. Hitch was one of them and I have to say that Will Smith is no Cary Grant. The movies suck. Pass it on.
D) All of the above.
Or perhaps we're just sick and tired of the political message we've been receiving from the movie industry.
Kong has made it's roduction budget back domestic and foreign distribution. It should be good for another 100 mill or so., It was a needless indulgence for the director and I can't recommend it unless you like fights with dinosaurs and large insects.
I agree, my wife and I were talking this week about comedies this year and came to the conclusion that they all sucked.
They're making a movie called "King Kong"? How does it end? I love surprises.
Yeah, "The Passion of The Christ" made Mel a sizable chunk. Others may want to research what sells.
Right, right, right, right and right. Oh,and one other thing - It's the lousy content Stupid!
Maybe Hollywood should ask itself, "Why do they hate us?"
I agreed with the statments about the changes in viewing habits. I don't believe it is so much a matter of falling sales, as it is a change in the source of revenue. I expect that one day movie theaters will be as much a relic as drive ins are today. Home theater is the future.
You're probably just too male to appreciate the movie. I watched it with my wife and oldest daughter. I fought to stay awake, and they talked about it for days.
the problem is what they put *into* the movies along with the inane pontification from the clueless, artless communist low-life that pass themselves off as actors, producers, writers that make up hollywood.
if hollywood wants to be a communist tool to push the agenda of antonio gramsci, that is their perogative, just as it is mine to boycott them and try to convince my friends to do the same.
personally, my goal is to avoid seeing *any* movies in theaters, although i yield occasionally to the movies my kids insist on seeing (the incredibles, nemo and a very few others)
Perhaps if Hollywood made at least *some* movies which didn't read like a DNC talking points memo - set to a flaming homosexual agenda - they wouldn't keep losing half their potential audience.
Just trying to help.
I mean, I'm totally fine with not going to movies (ever) - just explaining why I don't.
From the producers and directors to the actors to the critics and distributors, they all want to cram a political agenda down our throats.
The whole industry has to be in Synch to get the brokeback viewer results they want. Don't believe that, then watch the weekly movie critics analyze Fahrenheit 9-11 like a normal agenda free movie.
They make me sick.
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