[Ecommerce] LA times: Flops cause box office slumps story

[Manon Ress]

Still, I thought the "Constant Gardener" was a good movie.  But I
have not seen any of the movies mentioned below.
manon

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-boxoffice1oct01,0,5042859.story

THE NATION
This Just in: Flops Caused Box Office Slump
Studio execs who pinned problems on factors beyond their control now
take responsibility.

By Claudia Eller and John Horn, Times Staff Writers

One of Hollywood's basic tenets is that when things go wrong it's
somebody else's fault.

Which is why it's so startling, suddenly, to hear studio executives
and producers taking responsibility for the rows of empty seats in
movie theaters this year.

"It's really easy for all of us to blame the condition of the
theaters, gas prices, alternative media, the population changes and
everything else I've heard myself say," said Sony Pictures Vice
Chairman Amy Pascal, whose summer releases "Bewitched" and "Stealth"
flopped. "I think it has to do with the movies themselves."

After months of hand-wringing and doomsday forecasts about the
permanent erosion of moviegoing, the lunchtime chatter at Mr. Chow in
Beverly Hills and other industry haunts has turned decidedly inward.
Now, four straight weekends of crowded theaters have forced moguls
and creative executives to admit in public what they have spent
months avoiding: They were clueless about what audiences wanted.

"There's always a year when the pundits say the movie business is
over," said producer Brian Grazer, whose May release "Cinderella Man"
was a disappointment despite strong reviews. "If there's a movie
people want to see, they go see it. I just think we all have to do
our best to make better movies."

Credit a healthy September with showing that people haven't
completely rejected the multiplex. "The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and
"Transporter 2" both drew throngs of moviegoers. Last weekend
"Flightplan" (also produced by Grazer) and "Tim Burton's Corpse
Bride" pushed the box office 41% above the same weekend in 2004. From
Labor Day through last weekend, grosses were 17% above a year earlier.

Nobody is predicting that 2005 will beat last year's record gross of
$9.4 billion and attendance of 1.5 billion, which was driven by such
hits as "Shrek 2," "Spider-Man 2," "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of
Azkaban" and the surprise blockbuster "The Passion of the Christ."
And this weekend may well fall short of a year ago, when the animated
comedy "Shark Tale" surged to $47 million.

Still, to date, ticket sales lag behind 2004's numbers by only 6%,
with attendance off 8.7%. Both those numbers are a vast improvement
from a string of weekends this spring, when year-to-year comparisons
frequently showed double-digit drops.

So much for the irreversible trends that prognosticators have spent
months bemoaning. Amid 19 weekends of diminished box office =97 a
record stretch that started in late February and ended in early July
=97 many said they believed a cultural sea change was underway. Among
the theories: People preferred to consume their entertainment in the
comfort of their homes, whether watching DVDs on super-sharp plasma
screens, surfing the Internet or playing video games.

In May, Entertainment Weekly pondered whether even George Lucas'
"Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith" could do battle with the
forces keeping moviegoers at bay. "Can Revenge of the Sith Halt a
Serious Slump at the Box Office?" the magazine asked in a headline.
"Or Are the Movies as Doomed as Darth Vader?"

The movie grossed nearly $400 million domestically but failed to ease
Hollywood's anxiety. In June, an Associated Press-AOL poll found that
73% of adults preferred watching movies at home.

In August, after studios had watched such expensive films as "The
Island," "XXX: State of the Union" and "Kingdom of Heaven" go belly
up, Robert Iger, who took over as chief executive of Walt Disney Co.
today, speculated to Wall Street analysts that it might even be time
to release movies simultaneously in theaters and on DVD.

All along, theater owners said they knew better. Audiences, they
contended, were weary of films with lame plots whose advertising
campaigns seemed to be better thought out than their story lines.
They pointed to such sleeper hits as the documentary "March of the
Penguins," which drew huge crowds via word of mouth without the
benefit of splashy marketing, as evidence that if you give them a
good reason, people will get in their cars, drive to theaters and pay
dearly for a tub of popcorn.

Regal Entertainment Group, the nation's largest theater chain with
more than 6,300 screens, bluntly blamed Hollywood for its lower
earnings in its second quarter, citing the steady diet of
"unappealing films" that the studios served up.

"It's the movies, stupid," said John Fithian, president of the
National Assn. of Theatre Owners. "That's what we've been saying all
along."

Now, the studios are fessing up and taking their lumps. Last month,
for example, Disney Chief Financial Officer Thomas Staggs explained
to investors that the company's studio operation stood to lose as
much as $300 million in its most recent quarter because "in fairness,
the difficult results at the studio have more to do with the
performance of our titles than the marketplace as a whole."

The recent improvement in attendance is not being driven entirely by
mainstream hits such as "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," which debuted in
August and has grossed nearly $100 million domestically to date. Some
smaller movies are also generating steady business, among them the
highbrow thriller "The Constant Gardener."

James Schamus, whose Focus Features released that film, said he
thought it might have benefited from being an antidote to months of
mediocrity.

"We thought audiences would be so starved for something that wouldn't
be a two-hour assault on your intelligence," he said.

Bennett Miller, the director of the critically lauded "Capote," which
opened Friday, suggested that Hollywood's habit of playing it safe
makes more-daring films look particularly good by comparison.

"The market creates conventionality and conformity, but that's not
really what people want to see," he said.

But it's the potential blockbusters that Hollywood is betting on to
help close its box-office gap. Still to come are "Harry Potter and
the Goblet of Fire" in November, followed by "The Chronicles of
Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," "The Producers" and
"King Kong" in December.

"The summer slump really put us into a shortfall," said Paul
Dergarabedian, head of Exhibitor Relations Co., a box-office tracking
firm. "It's heartening that there were four up weekends in a row, and
that we have some big films in the pipeline."




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Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

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