No Middle Ground at Summer Box Office - Yahoo! News

No Middle Ground at Summer Box Office - Yahoo! News Interesting read. After all the moaning and groaning Hollyweird did over the summer, they still made 3.6 billion in ticket sales. The interesting thing is that its off 9 percent from last year (not really significant in my opinion), but that attendance is off 12 percent from last year. That's kind of odd - attendance is off more than revenue. (cough, cough, high ticket prices, cough cough). The other thing the article points out is the surprise falloff from the 9th ranked movie (money wise) to the 10th. Nine movies made over 150 million, but none made between 100-150 million. Except for the top 9, the rest of the movies of the year all made below the 100 million mark. Now, Hollywood has been toting out reasons all summer long as to why, but maybe, just maybe, could it be that it was just a lot of crappy movies this year? Do you really want to pay over a dollar a litre in gas to drive to the cineplex to pay $12 to sit in a theatre and eat overpriced popcorn to watch Jessica Simpson play Daisy Duke or Jessica Biel play a fighter pilot or would you rather stay home and watch the real Daisy Duke on TV or read a book about actual Stealth fighter jets and probably save yourself close to thirty bucks in the process? With prices so high, you have to be more 'choosey' with what you go to see - like picking something I haven't seen before like Sin City or a good story like An Unfinished Life or some fun action done well like Mr and Mrs Smith or some eye-popping funny weirdness like Charlie and Chocolate Factory, but the generic "it's summer so it should be a mindless blockbuster" type movie like the Dukes of Hazzard remake, or the Stealth bomb, or name any other of the instantly forgettable crap that traversed its way through your local cinema this summer is just not worth spending that kind of money on. Here's hoping the people that have the power to green light movies in Hollywood were paying attention and got the message we want better movies - but I doubt it.