Hollywood's horrible summer
2005-08-26 13:44
Los Angeles - The summer holidays are almost over, kids are heading back to school and in Hollywood, movie executives are pulling their hair out.
That's the picture being painted by industry insiders and the trade dailies after a disastrous summer of cinema which saw box office receipts drop by 9% and attendance fall by 11% over the same period last year.
Movies like Stealth and The Island which both cost well over $100m barely made a splash at the box office.
Other notable flops included Russell Crowe's depressing boxing drama Cinderella Man and Nicole Kidman's comic remake Bewitched.
Even horror films, which have usually attracted millions of dating teenagers irrespective of their quality, have seen their audiences slashed.
The much-hyped Wax was the only one of the five horror movies released this summer to make over $30m.
Many industry executives believe the age of cinema might be coming to a close.
"It's a cumulative thing, a seismic evolution of viewer's habits," said Robert Shaye, chairperson of New Line Cinema which had one of the few hits of the summer with the raunchy comedy The Wedding Crashers.
Making the case even worse for studio heads is the cannibalisation of their traditional business models by new technologies.
'The movies are not as good'
The triple whammy of DVD's, flat screen televisions and surround sound systems are allowing people to access theatrical movie experiences in the comfort of their homes.
That is bad news for cinema owners - but DVD sales have been giving Hollywood studios the majority of their profits for the past two years.
However, DVD sales have slowed this year according to Variety, while tech-savvy web surfers are finding it increasingly easy to download bootleg copies of movies for free on the internet, sometimes before they've even been released in cinemas.
To combat this, some leading Hollywood figures are backing a major revolution: the simultaneous release of movies on the big screen and on DVD.
No less a cinematic stalwart than Bob Iger, the incoming CEO of Disney, raised the hackles of cinema owners this week with his call for simultaneous releases.
But John Fithian, who heads the National Association of Theatre Owners, said the answer lay not in juggling release dates, but in releasing better movies and keeping things in perspective.
"Here's what we know about 2005: the movies are not as good," Fithian said. "They're not terrible; they're just not as good. And so the industry has experienced a temporary drop-off compared with 2004, the biggest box office year in movie history."
The Hollywood optimists are hoping that a cascade of quality movies due for release before the end of the year will vanquish the summer doldrums.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, King Kong and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe should pack audiences into cinemas in November and December.
The big question for Hollywood is how to keep them coming back.
- SAPA