The Myth(?) of the Box Office Slump.
a friend posted this on another board. Thought people here would find it interesting.
Mods, feel free to move this to another forum if it’s in the wrong place.
Read the Rest At: http://www.dallasobserver.com/Issues/2005-12-22/news/feature.html
I wonder if a similar dynamic operate in the comic book industry.
I would say yes. There’s always been questionable accounting methods in Hollywood. It’s hard to compare one year’s BO to another. Every movie can’t be a Titanic or Star Wars. Big budget doesn’t always mean big ticket sales.
I’m sure ticket sales were down, as mentioned in the OP, but there are many things about the movie business that wouldn’t surprise me if they turned out to be lies.
Ebert on the subject: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=ANSWERMAN
*the “box-office slump” is an urban myth that has been tiresomely created by news media recycling one another. By mid-December, according to the Hollywood Reporter, receipts were down between 4 percent and 5 percent from 2004, a record year when the totals were boosted by Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” which grossed $370 million. Many of those tickets were sold to people who rarely go to the movies. 2005 will eventually be the second or third best year in box-office history. *
What makes it an “urban” myth? Why not just “myth”?
Rural people don’t go in for myths!
They might not have been down so much as being re-directed. Every time I go see a movie , there is no way I am standing in line to get a ticket from the cashier , rather I go to those Kiosks that use the atm card. Which as far as they are concerned , may very well be a second revenue stream.
Declan
Weep not for Hollywood. The Slate article referenced pointed out that blockbuster films did very well last year; it was the independent studios that got shafted. Fewer and fewer people are willing to see thoughtful films, or those where character is important.
Further, any box office slump is blown away by DVD sales. Hollywood really doesn’t need theaters any more, other than the fact that “direct to DVD” is considered a sign of a bad film. But DVD releases times are shorter and shorter(**Serenity ** is a prime example). The model is to put it into the theaters as a promotional gimmick, and make your money on the DVE.
At this point, box office numbers (which are pretty arbitrary to begin with) are only part of a movie’s potential revenue, what with merchandising and DVD sales and video games and whatnot.
The comic-book industry has a somewhat similar position. DC and Marvel can routinely lose money on sales; their key assets are the copyrights and trademarks of their stables of easily-recognizable characters. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if DC made more on Superman merchandising and licensing than overall comic sales of all their titles.
Because movin’ pictures aren’t the stuff of old-fashioned myths. 
Urban myth or urban legend has become a bit of a misnomer… generally the term refers to modern or contemporary myths, as opposed to classical myths. At least, that’s what I generally understand it to be.
Hollywood accounting has long been weird and untrustworthy. Example: years back, Art Buchwald won a plagiarism suit against Paramount. A jury agreed that the storyline of Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America” was stolen from Buchwald. Now, even though it was a lousy movie, “Coming to America” did huge business. But when Buchwald demanded a percentage of the profits, lo and behold, Paramount accountants “proved” that the movie was a big money loser, and that there weren’t any profits fopr Buchwald to share in.
Now, I have no inside knowledge here, but it seems probable that this year has been a highly profitable one for mainstream Hollywood studios, and that any dropoff has come at the expense of independent films (“March of the Penguins” notwithstanding).
Yet ironically, in many cases, it’s the champions of indie films who have been spreading the “myth” (if it is that) of the box office slump. “You see,” the indie types say, “Hollywood is in a slump. That proves they should be making fewer films about giant apes and Martian invaders, and start making more small, intimate movies about gay cowboys and dysfunctional families.”
Alas, those folk may just be kidding themselves.
Why lie about a box-office slump?
I’d say that THEATER owners have a reason to be concerned. The riese of popularity of the home theater system and the DVD (especially discussion of releasing the DVD within a month of the theatrical release) could kill the megaplex.
Offhand, a few reasons occur to me:
It’s been a source of quite a bit of publicity and subtle marketing for the movie industry in general. A lot of newspaper and magazine articles have mentioned the slump I believe… maybe the hope is that john q driveway will notice one of them and think, “Hey, it’s been a while since I took my wife out to the movies… and we’ll be doing our bit to fight the slump.”
Might serve as a way to drum up grassroots support for some sort of government subsidy to ‘protect the endangered movie industry’
As astorian mentioned, anybody with a vested interest in changing the sort of movies that are financed and produced can use the idea of the slump as backing. “The reason we’re in a slump is that we’re making too many of X kind of movies. If we made some Y movies, we’d get the audience to come back.”
Not to mention it’s a good excuse for the MPAA to go whining to Congress about internet piracy and copyright infringement and push for more restrictive legislation and harsher penalties.
Oooh, right. Can’t believe I forgot that one.
I read Epstein’s book, in which he says things that were completely obvious to anybody who has been reading anything about the movies for the last few years as if they were words of revelation written on stone in fiery letters. If you take out all the references to the same set of figures on Schwarzenegger films the book would be 100 pages shorter. In short, it wasn’t impressive.
His Slate articles have been repeating the book almost word for word and they don’t impress either.
What the figures referred to here don’t say is that ticket prices keep climbing, so an equivalent gross equates to a smaller attendance. A lower gross is a real drop in visitations. Fewer people are going to movies and Epstein can’t argue his way around that.
Nor can his insistence that Hollywood is doing OK. At best, Hollywood is devouring itself by marketing films to first weekend audiences that don’t operate on word of mouth or reviews. Saying that “audiences were down, but ‘this came mainly at the expense of independent, foreign and documentary movies’” is not a small thing, it is a dagger in the heart of the movie business. Adults are a loyal audience with roots in the experience of movies on the screen; teens are not.
Hollywood is going after a fickle audience that is shrinking annually with films of ever-lesser value. How Epstein can think this is a meaningless indicator of the future is beyond me.
Isn’t most of this due to there is no *Passion of the Christ *and Fahrenheit 911 this year? 2004 was a very charged year and many conservative Christians, who might otherwise be infrequent movie goers, turned out for Passion in great numbers. 911 also brought out a lot of people who wouldn’t necessarily go to multiplex theatres.
I don’t know if either movie would have done quite as well in another year. 2004 was a unique year.
On top of that, the movie makers are pushing for shortened “windows” between theatrical releases and DVD/TV releases. Not just shortened, but shortened to the point where they don’t have to market the movie twice.
Possibly even shortened to ZERO like the upcoming release of Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble. Which is being release on DVD, the theaters, and I think HDNET all on the same day.
Naturally, this will hurt movie theaters. If the studios can convince people that they’re not making money with theatrical releases, they have more ammo (and public support) in that battle.
That’s going to be an interesting development.
It isn’t that people don’t want to see independent films. It’s just that Passion of the Christ was the Titanic of indy films. Add in Moore’s F-911 and you get your 500 million of box office that came from non-major studios last year that didn’t come this year.
The thing is this.
There are fewer movies that make in the 100 to 200 million range. Films this year, in general are either comeing in as modest box office producers (bellow 100 million) or huge hits (200 to 300 million)
I think, for the average movie goer, the bar, that represents ‘gotta see it in a theatre’, is being raised. A combination of, better home viewing environment, worse theatre viewing environment and higher ticket prices are the chief factors.