May Contain Nuts

It interests me that the movie industry is in such a tizzy about this year’s box office slump… it’s presently the second-longest in the past 20 yeas, and if Batman Begins doesn’t save it, it’ll be tied for first. There is of course the cautionary note that last year The Passion of the Christ managed to blow the entire year completely out of proportion and so it can’t really be counted as a fair comparison - factoring it out, the industry is up compared to last year. However, I do think the movie industry is in a bit of a slump, and it’s not something a few well-placed summer blockbusters are going to be able to change. The problem is that, while the movie industry is now a 54-week-a-year business, with new films opening *every week*, the vast majority of them are absolute unadulterated crap, and people know that. This year’s line-up seems to be particularly bad compared to previous years, and that, combined with yet another nation-wide increase in ticket prices by several theatre chains, has undoubtedly reduced the attendance this year. When are movie execs going to learn that crappy movies can’t bolster a flagging industry when they stop being used as stop-gaps in an empty release schedule and start becoming a weekly thing? And when are theatre execs going to learn that the more you charge for tickets, the fewer people actually come buy them?

This entry was posted on Friday, June 17th, 2005 at 4:07 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.