LOS ANGELES — 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.
Movies are a cyclical business and analysts say that 2010
benefited mightily from holdover sales for “Avatar,” which was
released late in 2009 and became one of the most popular movies
of all time. A decline of hundreds of millions of dollars is not
catastrophic when weighed against the size of the industry. Over
all, North American ticket revenue for 2011 is projected to be
about $10.1 billion, according to Hollywood.com, which compiles
box-office data.
That is only a 4.5 percent falloff from 2010. But 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. Theaters have also continued to increase
prices for standard tickets; moviegoers now pay an average of
$7.89 each, up 1 percent over last year.
Attendance for 2011 is expected to drop 5.3 percent, to 1.27
billion, continuing a slide. Attendance declined 6 percent in
2010.