Hollywood pins their hopes on superheroes and pirates
LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood is only marginally ahead of its lackluster 2005 in terms of dollars and cents. Studios are miles ahead in terms of summer hits and misses, though.
With ``Superman Returns" pulling in a solid $84 million in its first five days, Hollywood revenues this year are at $4.6 billion, 5 percent ahead of last year's, though, factoring in higher ticket prices, attendance is up just 1.7 percent.
Since the first weekend in May, the start of the summer season, revenues have climbed only 2 percent over last summer's, while attendance actually fell 1 percent.
Yet the picture generally looks rosier because studios avoided a repeat of their stinker-of-the-week performance of 2005, when seemingly every Friday brought a big new movie that audiences stayed away from. Critics and fans alike were turned off by the action bombs ``Stealth" and ``The Island," the comedies ``The Honeymooners," ``Rebound," and ``Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo," the historical epic ``Kingdom of Heaven , " and the remakes ``House of Wax" and ``The Bad News Bears."
Weekend after weekend, the box office was down compared to the previous year, a wake-up call that studios needed to make better movies to compete with big-screen televisions, video games , and other entertainment choices.
``You're going to see part of it this year and more of it next year, but I do think that everyone puts forth their best effort and takes notice of these things, and absolutely more than ever is committed to making better movies, better stories," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution at
Since climbing to a modern peak of 1.6 billion tickets sold in 2002, movie attendance has fallen each of the last three years, dropping to 1.4 billion in 2005, a steep 8 percent drop from the year before. In Hollywood's golden age of the 1930s and '40s, up to 4 billion tickets were sold annually, before TV eroded the movie business.
While business is up a bit this year over last, 2006 admissions are running 8.4 percent behind those of 2004, when Hollywood had a strong year with 1.52 billion tickets sold, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations.
At their current pace, 2006 ticket sales would come in slightly below Hollywood's average of 1.46 billion a year over the last decade.
``This is more of a normal year. If every year for Hollywood in terms of box office was like this . . . everybody would be content," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. ``Certainly in the wake of the fear created in the marketplace in 2005, this is exactly where we want to be. Sure it could be better, but at least it's not that repeated downward spiral we had in 2005."
This summer's top-grossing films collectively have brought in revenues on par with last year 's , though nothing so far has come close to 2005's biggest hit, ``Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith," which took $380 million.
Summer 2006 has produced two $200-million smashes, ``X-Men: The Last Stand" and ``The Da Vinci Code," plus a solid undercard of $100 million hits, ``Cars," ``Over the Hedge , " and ``The Break-Up." ``Superman Returns" is expected to hit that mark today .
Still, there have been disappointments. Though a sturdy hit, Tom Cruise's ``Mission: Impossible III" will top out domestically at about $135 million, $45 million less than the 1996 original and $80 million behind the 2000 sequel. The weaker returns apparently had more to do with a backlash against Cruise's odd behavior regarding Katie Holmes and his Scientology preaching than with the movie itself .
This summer's only notable commercial duds among big-studio movies have been ``Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties" and ``Poseidon," though the latter has managed to pull in almost $60 million.
Down the homestretch, this summer has a near-certain blockbuster in ``Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which could become the year's top-grossing movie if it comes close to matching the $305 million haul of the 2003 original.
There's a fair lineup of other potential hits, led by Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell's crime thriller ``Miami Vice." Competing for the faithful family market are three animated tales: ``Monster House," ``Barnyard , " and ``The Ant Bully."
In upcoming comedies, Uma Thurman stars in ``My Super Ex-Girlfriend," Tim Allen romps in ``Zoom," Will Ferrell hits the NASCAR circuit with ``Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby," while Owen Wilson, Kate Hudson , and Matt Dillon star in ``You, Me and Dupree," and the Wayans brothers team up for ``Little Man." Also coming are Samuel L. Jackson's ``Snakes on a Plane," and ``Lady in the Water," from director M. Night Shyamalan.
`` With `Superman' this week and `Pirates' right behind it, I think it'll be a big boost to the box office," said Dan Fellman, head of distribution at Warner Bros. ``Films are contagious. You see one good one, and you want to see another. That's the trend I think that's going to happen."
