Domestic box-office revenues for 2010 won’t quite hit last year’s record-setting haul, but they’ll be awfully close.
Total movie-ticket sales will reach $10.556 billion, the tracking agency Hollywood.com said Tuesday. That’s a slight decrease from the $10.6 billion total from 2009, but it’s also only the second time that the annual box office has crossed the $10 billion mark.
At the same time, total attendance was down 5.36 percent from last year. That’s the biggest percentage drop year over year since 2005. This will also be the second-lowest attended year of the decade.
It looked as if 2010 might have set a new record at the beginning of the year, when 2009’s “Avatar” was still going strong well into February and March, said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. James Cameron’s 3-D sci-fi epic boasts the biggest box-office take in history, collecting $2.7 billion worldwide, nearly $750 million of which came domestically.
“I started figuring the wheels might come off this thing when the summer season was faltering, and by the end of the summer it was the lowest-attended summer in over a decade,” Dergarabedian said. “Then I thought, maybe we can make it up in the holiday season, with ‘Tron,’ ‘Harry Potter,’ ‘Tangled’ and some other big movies on the way, but I didn’t know if there would be enough juice in the box office to make up for the loss of the summer, and it just didn’t happen.”
“Toy Story 3” was the highest-grossing film released in 2010, earning nearly $415 million. It’s one of many movies that were offered in 3-D or IMAX 3-D, which come with higher average ticket prices — which is partly what helped boost the annual total as far as it got, even as attendance sagged.
“Without that, we’d be looking at revenues that may not even have surpassed $10 billion,” Dergarabedian said.
But he has hope for another record in 2011, when sequels to the hit comedy “The Hangover” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise are due, along with the highly-anticipated comic book-inspired “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger.”
“My biggest lesson learned from this year,” Dergarabedian said, “is it’s always about the product.”
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