What, movies worry?

From USATODAY, "Smack-dab in the middle of the Academy Awards on March 5, Sid Ganis, head of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, took the stage to disparage DVDs.

No self-respecting filmmaker, he told audiences, has ever "finished a shot in a movie, stood back and said, 'That's going to look great on DVD.' Because there is nothing like the experience of watching a movie in a darkened theater ... and sharing the experience with total strangers."

Of course, fewer strangers have been sharing that experience lately, which is why Ganis made the unusual plea for Americans to get out of their houses and into theaters.

His concern is understandable. At last week's ShoWest convention of theater owners, the Motion Picture Association of America announced that movie attendance last year was the lowest since 1997. Box-office numbers are in a three-year slide. And through the first two months of this year, attendance is down yet again. (Related story: See what else went down at ShoWest)

But if the people who run the country's 36,000 movie screens are worried about the slump, it isn't showing much. If anything, they seem pretty bullish on the business. Home video, they insist, isn't going to kill moviegoing. It isn't even going to make much of a dent.

"We see all of this hand-wringing, people saying that it's the end of theaters," says Peter Brown, president of AMC Theatres, the nation's second-largest movie chain. "And, to be honest, we're laughing a little. Business is actually pretty good."

That's not to say that moviegoing isn't going to change in the next decade. And theater owners are bracing for what could be a fierce clash with other forms of entertainment beckoning for your spare time and cash.

But like a boxing champ scoffing at unproven challengers, the people who run your local cineplex aren't too concerned about quicker DVD releases, home theaters or kids downloading movies on their iPods.

That's because Hollywood makes more money by putting a film in theaters and making you wait to see it at home.

"What some people don't get is that a movie makes a much stronger connection with audiences than DVDs," says M. Night Shyamalan, director of Signs and the upcoming Lady in the Water. It's due in theaters July 21.

"If someone really loves something they see in theaters, they champion it in a way they don't with DVDs," he says. "They work harder to get people to come to theaters. And that creates a demand when the DVD finally does come out. Financially, messing with that model is dumb."

Many studio executives agree. They expect the window from a movie's release to its video debut to narrow, but not to close. And though opening a film simultaneously in theaters and homes might work for obscure art-house fare, the strategy would flop with big films.

Walk the Line, for instance, would have tanked on home video if the studio had released the Johnny Cash biography simultaneously on DVD and in theaters, says Bruce Snyder, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox.

"It was an unknown quantity," Snyder says. "People didn't know the story, didn't know about the performances. It needed to be in theaters and get people talking before they were going to buy a copy to keep forever."

The highest-profile test of releasing a film at home and in theaters, Steven Soderbergh's Bubble, was a mixed bag. The doll-factory drama drew strong reviews from more than two-thirds of the nation's critics, according to the survey site rottentomatoes.com.

But the $1.6 million film managed only $145,000 in theaters. Distributor Magnolia Pictures says the film took in about $5 million in video-on-demand purchases and in sales to stores like Wal-Mart, but won't release specific sales figures.

Although the movie was profitable, "it's hard to say many people actually saw it," says Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo. "You'd be hard pressed to categorize that experiment as a success."

Even executives behind the push for simultaneous home and theater release doubt that the strategy will deliver much of a blow to ticket sales. The Independent Film Channel, for instance, is releasing at least a half-dozen movies on pay-per-view on the same day they are released in theaters in New York and Los Angeles.

The films include Confederate States of America, which was executive-produced by Spike Lee, and American Gun, with Donald Sutherland and Forest Whitaker.

"I know that people think we've opened Pandora's box," says Jonathan Sehring, head of IFC Films. "But we're just giving a platform to movies that probably wouldn't have gotten shown by most theater chains, anyway."

The DVD threat, Sehring says, arose largely because Hollywood has abandoned movies that are made outside the major studios, which forced filmmakers to look at other avenues for exposure.

"You look at Brokeback Mountain, and it's not really an independent movie," he says. "These films still cost $15 million, $30 million, and are just produced by a division of a big studio. When I think of independent movies, I think of something that costs less than $5 million. Allowing people to see a movie at home doesn't keep them from going to the theater for other movies."

And he doesn't see his studio's dual-release strategy as a slippery slope to, say, premiering a Spider-Man or Harry Potter at theaters and video stores.

That strategy would undercut multiple theater viewings, a foolish move when "people are still going to buy those DVDs," Sehring says. "And, look, there's still nothing like watching a movie in a theater. No one wants to see the theater experience pass."

Including those who dabble on the small and big screens. J.J. Abrams, who has created television hits including Lost and Alias, is directing his first film, Mission: Impossible III, due in theaters May 5.

He shudders at the thought of the Tom Cruise film hitting video shelves the same day.

"I made this movie for theaters," Abrams says, "not for DVD."

Though technology has made it possible to download films on a 3-inch iPod screen, Abrams believes theaters will remain unrivaled for movie experiences.

"Movies kick TV's (butt)," he says. "Story is important. But people also come to the theater for spectacle."

Historically speaking, movie houses are still providing plenty of financial firepower.

According to the National Association of Theatre Owners, roughly 1 billion tickets were sold domestically each year in the 1970s, 1.1 billion in the 1980s and 1.3 billion in the 1990s. Through the first half of this decade, roughly 1.5 billion tickets sold annually.

"Every decade or so, some new technology is supposed to be the death of the movies," says John Fithian, president of the theater owners association. "Television, videocassettes, the Internet. We're still around."

That doesn't mean multiplex owners can kick their feet up with a bucket of popcorn.

Most exhibitors agree steps are needed to end the ticket-sales slide now, including blocking cellphone signals, cutting down on pre-show commercials and, perhaps most important, modernizing.

"One reason we've seen a decline in the past few years is that going to the movies isn't as special as it used to be," says Michael Lewis of Real D Cinema, which produces 3-D projectors and films. "People have big screens and good sound at home. Why would they leave if you don't offer more than that?"

But it won't come cheap. Analysts say that converting the country's projectors from film to digital would cost $3 billion.

And look for more theaters to offer services such as baby-sitting, valet parking and fresh-cooked meals.

"The movie business is a little like the drug business," says Greg Laemmle, president of Laemmle Theaters, which operates 16 theaters in Southern California.

"We are the pushers, and our customers are the users. Even if business is good, you have to keep giving people what they want."

And people still want to go to movies, says Wolfgang Petersen, director of such spectacle films as Troy, The Perfect Storm and Poseidon, which arrives May 12.

Despite the explosion of video games, cable TV and the Internet, the movie theater has one advantage over those entertainment options, he says. It's away from home. Most people, he points out, have kitchens and television sets. But they still go to restaurants and baseball games.

"Theaters are always going to be around, and doing fine," Petersen says. "With computers and technology, we're becoming more and more secluded from each other. And the movie theater is one of the last places where we can still gather and experience something together. I don't think the desire for that magic will ever go away."