2011 Has Worst Movie Attendance in 16 Years
Hollywood’s New Year’s wish must be for bigger audiences in 2012 after preliminary reports show that movie attendance in North America was down 4.4 percent in 2011, the lowest level since 1995.
According to projections, domestic box office revenues for Jan. 1-Dec. 31 will reach roughly $10.2 billion, down 3.6 percent from the $10.58 billion collected in 2010.
That means an estimated 1.28 billion people went to the movies in 2011 — the lowest turnout since 1995, when 1.211 billion people showed up at their local theaters. Attendance reached an all-time high in 2002 (1.57 billion), according to the National Association of Theater Owners.
The movie industry will likely blame this drop at least partially on online piracy. The Motion Picture Association of America is already a major supporter of the controversial SOPA legislation in Congress, which is supposedly aimed at reducing copyright infringement on the internet, like pirated movies; and these latest statistics, whether they can actually be attributed to online piracy, will only add fuel to the fire.
The industry is also aware that even legal home viewing could be cutting in to box office revenues. Universal Studios briefly tried to release the film Tower Heist almost simultaneously at theaters and on cable Video on Demand, before being fought back by theater owners. However, many acknowledge that given the success of Netflix and Redbox, some sort of direct-to-home release will have to be worked out by Hollywood soon.
But studios, theaters, and filmmakers may be ignoring the most obvious, and most painful, solution: make better movies.
[image via ABC Local]
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[...] 2011 Has Worst Movie Attendance in 16 Years Hollywood's New Year's wish must be for bigger audiences in 2012 after preliminary reports show that movie attendance in North America was down 4.4 percent in 2011, the lowest level since 1995. According to projections, domestic box office revenues for … Read more on DrJays.com Live [...]
They can blame online piracy – I blame spending $10 a ticket to sit in a theater with cell phones going off and people who won’t shut up to see some very poorly written films.
With the huge plummit in box office attendance and video store rentals, I’ve switched to streaming all my television online. I cancelled my cable service and now stream all my movies right off my PS3. I found out how at this website; http://www.digitalcontentreview.com. It’s a great site with a lot of great services to offer and it saved me a bunch of money.
12 hour shifts are considered the new normal and about every job is minimum wage. People just do not have the time to watch movies at the theater, or the money. Theatres were used to people spending 20 dollars at the theater multiple times a month. Well thats over with. Of course the profits are still rising due to the fact that the global audience increases.
most obvious reason at least for me, that movie attendance is down is simply that people can afford it less and less. We have very little disposable income right now, and even though I love to go to the movies, it’s actually my favorite thing to do, simply cannot afford it after the bills are paid. I haven’t been in more than 6 months at least. Very pricey to go see a movie these days.