Why is domestic B.O. down 12.9% this year?

How about this from TheWrap:

The box office’s doldrums can be blamed on a lack of diversity, National Association of Theatre Owners President and CEO John Fithian told reporters Thursday.

In particular, Fithian said that a lack of family films and a glut of violent action movies contributed to sluggish ticket sales.

Through last weekend the domestic box office was down 12.9 percent to roughly $1.9 billion, according to Box Office Mojo.

“The diversity of the movie slate in first quarter was just not there,” Fithian said.

“We had a lot of movies rated R that included a lot of violence,” he added. “And those movies can sell, but not when that’s all you’ve got.”

Thus far this year, violent R-rated movies include:

A Good Day to Die Hard: $66M

Gangster Squad: $46M

Texas Chainsaw 3D: $34M

Broken City: $20M

Parker: $18M

The Last Stand: $12M

Dead Man Down: $10M

Bullet to the Head: $9M

Stand Up Guys: $3M

There’s The Call with $17M its opening weekend which looks like it could at least break even, but it’s a thriller, not an action movie like almost all of the titles above.

So what gives? Why so many action movies in the first three months of the year?

One guess: Because there has been so much focus on action movies due to their popularity in the international marketplace, there are a lot of these films in the can. For instance, A Good Day to Die Hard has generated $200M overseas. Gangster Squad: $53M. But the rest of those films on the list? Virtually nothing.

Does that mean Hollywood has committed too much focus to the R-rated action genre? Why their generally poor performance at the box office? If these type of movies continue to have soft numbers, might that cause buyers to pull back in the action genre?

What’s your take? See you in comments to continue the conversation.

For more of the TheWrap article, go here.
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