“Rebounding at the Box Office”

It’s that time of year where we get lots of analysis about the movie business over the previous 12 months. In Monday’s NYT, there’s this article titled, “Rebounding at the Box Office.” Some highlights:

Projections show that about 1.36 billion people will see films this year, compared with 1.29 billion in 2011. Ticket revenue at North American theaters is projected to jump by 6 percent, to $10.8 billion, according to Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst for Hollywood.com. What really matters, however, is that Hollywood achieved the increase without raising prices.

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Hollywood’s upswing is particularly notable because it comes despite a poor summer season, a period from the first full weekend in May to Labor Day when studios typically record 40 percent of their annual revenue. Summer ticket revenue dropped 3 percent and attendance hit a 19-year low. The July theater shootings in a Colorado theater kept some people home, but a lot of films were simply mediocre.

The fact domestic B.O. ticket sales rose to the degree they did with a poor summer session is significant. That suggests strength across the board in terms of the marketability of movies, marking an unusual amount of depth in content as compared to recent years. But as the NYT article points out:

Still, how Americans respond to movies became less important to studios in 2012. Look no further than “Ice Age: Continental Drift,” from 20th Century Fox, to understand why. North American ticket sales for “Continental Drift,” the fourth installment in the animated series, totaled $161 million, a 24 percent decline from “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” in 2009, after adjusting for inflation.

Then why is Fox thrilled with its performance and developing ideas for a fifth chapter? Because “Continental Drift” took in $714 million overseas, including $68 million in China alone. “This is a turning-point year for the relationship between China and Hollywood,” said Phil Contrino, editor of Boxoffice.com. “It’s becoming very clear how important China is to the worldwide gross of a film.”

2012. Mark that down as the year where the movie business started a significant pivot toward China. There was a 90% increase in B.O. there from imported movies. Indeed Life of Pi became the 2nd Hollywood movie to gross more in China than North America.

Then there’s the story of Lions Gate:

It was a particularly lucrative year for Lions Gate Entertainment, which includes both the Lionsgate and Summit banners. Along with “The Hunger Games,” the company had “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 2,” which has so far generated $783 million in global ticket sales. According to Rentrak, a company that tracks box office data, Lions Gate, a small movie company that leapt forward with its acquisition of Summit Entertainment, will end the year as North America’s fifth-largest distributor as measured by ticket sales, surpassing 20th Century Fox and Paramount.

Common denominators: (1) Both movie franchises based on YA titles. (2) Both featuring a female Protagonist. (3) Both feature a combination of action and romance.

But for me, the biggest news item to arise from 2012 is the list of movies appealing to the adult crowd [35+], and especially Baby Boomers and Seniors. Lincoln, Magic Mike, Argo, Flight, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom just some of the films that succeeded both with critics and the adult crowd. The fact that all of these titles are original movies — not sequels, prequels, remakes — to go along with others like Ted, Safe House, Looper, Chronicle, and The Grey provides strong evidence to movie studios: Make more of these movies, please!

For more of the NYT article, go here.