Hollywood is finishing its summer with record revenue but the lowest actual movie attendance in five years.
Domestic receipts from the first weekend in May through the upcoming Labor Day weekend should come in at about $4.35 billion — $100 million more than the record set last year, according to Paul Dergarabedian, box-office analyst for Hollywood.com.
Attendance is down because of a steep rise in ticket prices, heavily due to a surge in 3-D screenings, which cost a few dollars more than regular movie admissions.
Through Labor Day, the actual number of tickets sold during the summer season is expected to come in at 552 million, the lowest since 563.2 million tickets were sold in summer 2005, Dergarabedian estimated Monday.
Ticket prices this year are averaging $7.88, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. That’s up 38 cents, or 5 percent, from 2009.
“To have record revenue built on the back of much higher ticket prices, in a way, it’s kind of a shallow victory. You want to see attendance go up every year, not down,” Dergarabedian said.
The summer delivered some huge crowd-pleasers, led by Disney’s “Toy Story 3,” which followed “Shrek 2” as just the second animated film to top $400 million at the domestic box office.
Paramount’s “Iron Man 2” shot past $300 million, while Summit Entertainment’s “The Twilight Saga: Eclipse” has almost hit that mark. Topping $200 million were the Warner Bros. release “Inception,” Paramount and DreamWorks Animation’s “Shrek Forever After” and Universal’s “Despicable Me.”
Sony had three $100 million hits with “The Karate Kid,” ”Grown Ups” and “Salt.”
Other releases failed to live up to the hype of summer blockbuster season, among them the Warner Bros. sequel “Sex and the City 2,” Disney’s “The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” and 20th Century Fox’s “Marmaduke” and “Knight and Day.”
“Audiences were underwhelmed, and they voted with their absence,” Dergarabedian said. “If you asked most people what they thought of the quality of the movies, it’s kind of a so-so summer. We could have done a lot worse were it not for films like ‘Inception’ and ‘Toy Story 3.'”
Apple and Google Face UK Investigation Into Mobile Browser Dominance
Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers, a British watchdog said Friday in a report that recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year.
The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker's tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. Apple does this by restricting progressive web apps, which don't need to be downloaded from an app store and aren't subject to app store commissions, the report said.
"This technology is not able to fully take off on iOS devices," the watchdog said in a provisional report on its investigation into mobile browsers that it opened after an initial study concluded that Apple and Google effectively have a chokehold on "mobile ecosystems."
The CMA's report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers "the clearest or easiest option."
And it said that the a revenue-sharing deal between the two U.S. Big Tech companies "significantly reduces their financial incentives" to compete in mobile browsers on Apple's iOS operating system for iPhones.
Both companies said they will "engage constructively" with the CMA.
Apple said it disagreed with the findings and said it was concerned that the recommendations would undermine user privacy and security.
Google said the openness of its Android mobile operating system "has helped to expand choice, reduce prices and democratize access to smartphones and apps" and that it's "committed to open platforms that empower consumers."
It's the latest move by regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to crack down on the... Read More