With five days left in 2011, ticket sales in North America are running about $500 million behind last year ? despite higher prices ? prompting a round of soul searching by studios trying to determine what went wrong and how best to proceed.
The studio executives are alarmed by the downturn nonetheless, in part because the real picture is worse than the raw revenue numbers suggest. Revenue, for instance, has been propped up by a glut of 3-D films, which cost $3 to $5 more per ticket. Studios made 40 pictures in 3-D in the last 12 months, up from 24 last year, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, a movie database.
Theatres have also continued to increase prices for standard tickets; moviegoers now pay an average of $7.89 each, up 1% over last year. Attendance for 2011 is expected to drop 5.3%, to 1.27 billion, continuing a slide. Attendance declined 6% in 2010. Hopes that a group of major releases would supercharge the Christmas box office also fizzled. Paramount?s Mission: Impossible ? Ghost Protocol was a solid No. 1, taking in $26.5 million in its second weekend for a total of about $59 million. But Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (Warner Brothers) was a softer-than-expected second, with $17.8 million in ticket sales, lifting its two-week total to $76.6 million. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (20th Century Fox) continued to struggle in third place, taking in about $13.3 million for a two-week total of $50.3 million.
Three heavily-promoted new entries had tepid results. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Sony), was fourth, taking in $13 million for the weekend and $21.4 million since opening last Wednesday. Steven Spielberg?s Adventures of Tintin (Paramount) was fifth with about $9.1 million ($22.3 million since opening last Wednesday).