Audiences have changed. Will studios follow?
Filed under: Box Office, Exhibition
Finally, a box office story with a non-whiny, perceptively critical angle: "The gaps between [the box office returns of] '05 and 2004 are evidence of a fundamental shift in the way Americans consume movies," writes Gabriel Snyder in Variety. Essentially, Snyder argues, audiences are showing moviemakers that there's no longer any such thing as a "safe bet". If a film like Passion of the Christ can skew an entire year's box office record, propelled almost entirely by non-regular moviegoers, yet even the final Star Wars film can't manage more than a couple of weeks in the number one slot, it's all a sign that "blockbusters can materialize out of nowhere, [and] sometimes "sure things" fail to click." So what do studios do? Well, for one thing, they can stop complaining about year-to-year grosses; Snyder points out that when you launch a film like Monster-in-Law exactly one year after the opening of a film like Troy, even if the girl-skewing romantic comedy does better than expected (and it did), it doesn't take a rocket scientist to predict that the middle-brow action epic is going to set a gross mark that is hard for a much smaller film to exceed. But, on the whole, "though on percentage terms the summer looks like it's very soft, the difference is fairly small in blockbuster terms." 
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-21-2005 @ 2:53PM
David C said...
Er, so which is it? In one sentence, he's talking about a "fundamental shift in the way Americans consume movies," and in another, "the difference is fairly small in blockbuster terms."
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6-21-2005 @ 11:07PM
Ash said...
We are approching a paradigm shift in film viewing. This happened in the beginning of the 70's. The studios started hemorrhaging money from all the flops. The politically charged films of yesteryear prove that people will still go to the theatre in mass. The public just wants more from a movie these days in terms of content. Soon we will see a ton of probing and provocative films that are more pop oriented. And, they will succeed.
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6-22-2005 @ 10:37AM
Edgar said...
I dont think they are actually losing money, its just shifting mediums. Whatever they are losing in box office receipts im sure are being picked up by dvd sales.
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6-23-2005 @ 11:23PM
mary said...
The audience has not changed. People still turn out for a great movie. Ask George Lucas. Stop giving us crap. We want ORIGINAL (stop the sequals and remakes)thought provoking film.I used to be a movie every week person but now I'm out of the habit because it was so bad for so long. No I don't want to watch it on DVD the first time.Later.
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6-24-2005 @ 3:11PM
Tom Ford said...
I mentioned The Passion in another post. a $300 million movie opening in March inflated last year's B.O. (and it made the box office bigger, too)
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