By Dee-Dum
Edited by shrrshrr

 There is no middle ground is analyzing box office receipts from 2005: either it was a terrible year, or an atypically terrible year. No one is crowing about the box office performance of Hollywood, but there is a dispute about what it means for the future.

Box office receipts for the domestic U.S. release of films were down somewhere around 5%-7% from 2004. Roger Ebert calls the reports of a decline in receipts an “urban myth” and points out that receipts in 2004 were artificially high due to Passion of the Christ, a film that took in $350 million largely from non-movie goers. But Roger, if you discount Passion of the Christ’s contribution to the 2004 box office, that just moves the question to why receipts have been down for the past two years.

The LA Times ran a story minimizing the effect of the drop off, claiming that it won’t hurt the industry thanks to DVDs, and that it is just a statistical anomaly, a “down year.” However DVD sales are starting to show weakness as well, and given constant population growth a “down year” should have slower growth in revenue, not negative growth.

A look at the top ten grossing films demonstrates little evidence for the decline in revenue. There are the expected summer blockbusters (Batman Begins, Star Wars: Episode III, War of the Worlds) and must-see children’s films (Narnia, Harry Potter, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Madagascar). But the other two films are lightweight summer comedies, Hitch and The Wedding Crashers, the kind of films that usually don’t crack the top ten grossers of the year.

I place the cause for the drop in revenues for films not on home DVD systems or rude people with cell phones, but on Hollywood. Two trends have caused the decline in revenue, and both are deeply ingrained in how Hollywood does business.

The first is the emphasis on the first weekend’s gross. Hollywood doesn’t care about a film’s “legs” or how long it stays in theaters; all they want is to be able to advertise “the #1 film in America” before word of mouth gets around about how bad the film is. Films used to roll out slowly, gather good word of mouth, and finish big (Brokeback Mountain’s slow roll out is reminiscent of this approach); now the whole point is to make as much as quickly as possible and get the DVDs out as soon as possible. It is an atypical example, but Serenity opened at #2 in October, was out of the top ten in three weeks, and was available for purchase by Christmas.

By contrast, there once was a film that opened on May 30, 1977 and grossed a paltry $1.5 million. If a film opened that small today it would be buried the next week and out of theaters in a month. The film was called Star Wars, it had good word of mouth, and subsequently made a significant amount of money, I believe (I haven’t done the research).

The second problem, somewhat related, is the tendency to swing for the fences. Some studios like Miramax recognized that the profit margin for small films was greater than for big films, but that isn’t how Hollywood works. The only films that are green-lighted (green-lit?) are ones that will appeal to a broad demographic in the hopes of being the next Titanic. Of course this produces “high concept” films that are dumbed-down to the lowest common denominator (for example, Stealth). It also puts a premium on “brand recognition,” meaning that properties with pre-existing fan bases are preferred over innovative, creative fare (was a big screen version of The Dukes of Hazzard really a good idea even if it had been done competently?).

Hollywood blames the drop in movie revenues on home DVD systems, rude patrons, the need for digital projection systems and astrology. No one wants to look in the mirror and say, “I make crappy films.”

Roger Ebert calls 2005 a good year because he can find 10 films that he really, really liked; he doesn’t notice that most of these films did almost no business outside of independent art houses (Junebug? Yes? Me and You and Everyone We Know?). With all due respect, 2005 was a terrible year at the cinema. I went to a movie theater 26 times in 2005, and I only reached that level by seeing four films on the last four days of the year (my personal record is 60 films). Until Hollywood gets off its blockbuster mentality and worries about more than opening weekend sales and DVD issues, it isn’t going to get better.