By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY
LOS ANGELES — Hollywood desperately needs a hero, and not the kind that fights crime, or flies or wears tights.
One that makes money.
Heading into its most important season of the year, the film industry is staggering into summer. Ticket sales have been down eight out of the past nine weekends compared with the same weekends last year. Attendance is down 7% from 2007.
And the summer movie slate, while still rife with movies sure to be blockbusters, is hardly as imposing as last season, when installments of Spider-Man, Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean all opened in May — and raked in more than $300 million apiece.
Even studio executives concede the reason for this year's sluggish start is simple: Moviegoers think the films stink.
"The product simply hasn't been there yet," says Chris Aronson, a distribution executive for 20th Century Fox, the only studio with a movie that has done more than $100 million this year, Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
Last year, four films crossed the $100 million mark in the first quarter: 300, Wild Hogs, Blades of Glory and Ghost Rider.
"You can say what you want about ticket prices and the economy," Aronson says. "But the truth is, when there's a good movie people want to see, they spend the money to see it."
Still, some wonder whether Hollywood, which has traditionally flourished when the economy is struggling, isn't as recession-proof as it once was.
"It will always be about the quality of the product, but when gas is $4 a gallon, it's not even cheap to drive to the theaters," says Gitesh Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru.com.
"And in some bigger cities," he says, "it costs a couple $24 to buy two movie tickets as a date. Why are they going to do that when they can wait a few months and get it on Netflix — especially when Hollywood is in the creative drought it is now? The movies simply aren't delivering."
Summer accounts for 40% of Hollywood's overall ticket sales. And Pandya says that if the big movies of May —Iron Man, Speed Racer, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull — meet projections, "we'll be out of the slump in a hurry."
But others say the key is in smaller hits.
"We've got to reach niche audiences," says Steve Rothenberg of Lionsgate, which has released four No. 1 films with filmmaker Tyler Perry. "People need more movies they connect with, not big-budget movies trying to be everything to everyone."
Actor Seth Rogan, star of raunchy comedies Knocked Up, Superbad and Aug. 8's Pineapple Express, says the key to ending the slump is simpler.
"Make 'em laugh, man," he says. "Good comedies get people talking more than other kinds of movies. Nothing makes you want to see a movie more than a buddy saying he laughed his (butt) off."
1 comment:
Well geez, they're not even trying right now. This article is weirdly timed.
Except for Leatherheads, I can't think of a single movie getting a heavy ad blitz that's opened since the Oscars, a time when the various Oscar winners get their last big screen gasp. The only flicks that have posters all over the place are Forgetting Sarah Marshall and The Forbidden Kingdom, both of which opened yesterday.
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