Sunday, September 01, 2013

The Year in Box Office

... according to the Gray Lady.

Huge Summer ... Few Blockbusters

Ticket revenue in North America for the period between the first weekend in May and Labor Day totaled $4.71 billion, a 10.2 percent increase over the same period last year. Attendance rose 6.6 percent, to about 573 million. ...

Ticket revenue in North America for the period between the first weekend in May and Labor Day totaled $4.71 billion, a 10.2 percent increase over the same period last year. Attendance rose 6.6 percent, to about 573 million. ...

“Turbo” was squished, taking in $80 million at North American theaters — one of the smallest totals in DreamWorks Animation history. ... Disney had the summer’s No. 1 movie in “Iron Man 3,” which took in $408.6 million in North America, for a global total of $1.2 billion. “Monsters University” generated more than $700 million in global ticket sales.

But Disney also had the summer’s No. 1 box office bomb: “The Lone Ranger,” which cost at least $375 million to make and market, and has taken in about $232 million worldwide. After theater owners take their cut, Disney is looking at a write-down of $160 million to $190 million. ...

Higher-priced 3-D tickets took another tumble, at least in the United States and Canada. ... Family films fared the worst, with “Turbo” setting a new industry low for the format. ...

Movie companies continued to make most of their profits with sequels; eight of this summer’s top 12 films came from continuing franchises. ...

The media's theme of this box office summer is that the field was too crowded, also that the many animated features in release trampled each other, suppressing revenues.

I could maybe buy that theory except that two animated features (sequels, naturally) made big profits. The two that didn't, a tale about a snail and a low-budget Cars spin-off, had their own reasons for under-nourished box office: the key demographic (18-42) saw no compelling reason to rush to the AMC on opening weekend to watch a speed-crazy mollusk or anthropomorphic flying machines.

Hard to believe, but there it is.





1 comments:

Alex Dudley said...

The solution to the problem with animated features is simple. Release them to where there's a new one out every four weeks to give each other breathing room, or make animated films of greater variety.
It'll be interesting to see which option Hollywood will take.

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