The other day I came across a confusing set of news articles. Check this out:
Analysts have reported that the 2011 summer movie season sold the lowest number of tickets at the box office since 1997. Total tickets sold? Approximately 543 million little stubs that were torn in half at the entrance to your local movie theater during the 2011 summer season.
The same report noted that this is the 4th year/summer in a row where attendance was in decline.
OK, that’s a bit unfortunate for the movie theater industry, that’s for sure.
But wait… there’s more.
Ticket sales have brought an increase in revenue to the studios. Yea, fewer tickets sold but larger profit margin. Yes, you read right.
According to the NY Times article, Hollywood pulled in almost 1% more than the year before. But even though 1% doesn’t seem like much, consider what 1% of $4.38 billion actually means.
SO the studios are of course happy about the increase, but the data balances on a teetering on a dangerous fulcrum because that increase came from ticket sales spewed forth by the 18 movies that were released with 3D screenings.
And to think, if they didn’t have the huge summer blockbuster movies of Transformers 3, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Pt 2, & the Marvel tentpole movies, well, the industry would have tanked a little.
But that’s a moot point. We all have our favorite form of escape and movies like those mentioned above were highly anticipated and much appreciated, for what they were.
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Critics Know What They’re Saying… It Just Depends Who They’re Talking To.
They also prove that while critics may have trashed on the dramatic quality of some of the movies, that fans and critics don’t live in the same hemisphere of entertainment. Critics seem to review for other critics and ignore the popcorn factor that nails it at the box office.
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Overseas Movie-Goers Are Life Savers
Right now, overseas tickets seem to be the ticket these days. No pun intended. Right now Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the new Smurfs movie are totally destroying the box office overseas, helping some studios weather this storm.
The overseas market seems to be more curious and bring more bucks to the theater.
In the meantime, I think 3D needs to be revisited. No, not by us, the consumer, but by the studios. People might be curious, but they’re not going to flock to 3D movies. They’re too pricey. True, not that pricey per ticket, but when you consider a group or family, that gets too pricey.
Studios also need to consider giving movie-goers the options to see both 2D and 3D versions of movies. Case in point was the failure of the remake Fright Night. It came out in 3D and have very few 2D opportunities. It flopped because no one wants to see something and pay 3D prices if they’re on the fence about it. I think the 3D option deterred those who might have been on the fence.
Me, I thought I’d wait for the movie to scale back screenings, expecting the 3D to be pulled, but instead Disney pulled the 2D screenings and only left the 3D screenings to attend. No wonder this movie flopped despite excellent word-of-mouth by pre-screenings by some lucky fans.
3D is stale in live-action movies but looks incredible in animated movies. I wasn’t going to drop bucks on a 3D movie when fellow blogging critics were questioning why it was in 3D. Nope.
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So fewer folks hit up the theater, but spent more bucks.
In a way, we have either told the studios we’re willing to pay the bucks, reinforcing their desires. I experimented with a few 3D movies, but chose wisely and kept the 3D experiences to a minimum.
Did that many people experiment? Probably. But with the novelty wearing off, how can studios start to sway us back into the movie theater?
They have their job cut out for them but there might be a few ways. Maybe the studios will decide to either
A: Pull back on the 3D offerings,
B: Put out improved quality content.
c: All of the above?
But that’s just this one movie-goer’s guess.
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OH, wait, I almost forgot something I saw later that day!
Later that day I came across a wee bit of a conflicting article on Deadline, where, spouting the word from NATO (National Association of Theater Owners) that was saying that the summer 2011 box office season did pulling $4.4 billion, but said that estimated ticket sales were up by 1%.
Eh???
The release said that 546 million tickets were sold.
Eh, whatever.
What I took away from the entire market babble was that 3D ticket sales helped boost sale numbers.
