“Will the recession change movies?”
Earlier this week, CNN ran a fairly generic article about the effects of the recession on the movie business. They threw out some facts:
Audiences are going along for that ride in record numbers. Gross movie ticket sales to this weekend were up 18.8 percent over the same period last year, to $1.66 billion, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. Box offices saw their best January in history this year, with more than $1 billion in gross sales.
Then some speculation:
Analysts say the recession also is likely to affect the types of movies being made by Hollywood, how they’re made and what will succeed.
Based on recent successes, there’s evidence to suggest studios will continue to focus on comedies and action films.
Of the top five top-grossing movies of 2009, three — “Mall Cop,” “He’s Just Not That into You” and “Bride Wars” — are comedies. One, “Hotel for Dogs,” is a family movie, and “Taken,” so far the №2 film in terms of sales, is an action film about a kidnapping.
Then walked back on the speculation:
Basinger, the film historian, said it’s too soon to identify any firm trends involving movies and the recession besides the fact that more people will go to see them. Where they’ll see them is up for debate. The venue may be the theater, it may be on a cell phone, she said.
The recession, she added, is likely to speed up changes in the way people view and create films. It’s a healthy process, she said.
“The history of the motion picture is a history of constantly shifting venues; and here’s what happens: Film never dies, it keeps going,” she said.
But the main reason I’m posting the article is because of the final line in the piece:
But she still sees the movie theater experience as the cheapest and fullest way to abandon your troubles and lose yourself in a story.
“Movies are a great form of escape because you enter a darkened place and surrender to something that’s bigger than you,” she said.
Man, I love that description — “enter a darkened place and surrender to something that’s bigger than you.” That’s not only a great way to describe the movie-going experience, doesn’t it seem like an excellent description of the psychological nature of the Hero’s Journey? Because we know that while the Protagonist typically goes on a journey in the External World, their is a concomitant ‘journey’ they take in the Internal World, almost always involving a descent into their Inner Self — their “darkened place” — where they find their Core Essence — “something that’s bigger than you” — and finally allow themselves to accept and embrace that Core Essence — “surrender” — leading toward what we may call a Unity state.
Who knew CNN was such a source of film criticism!
UPDATE: The NY Times weighs in with “In Downturn, Americans Flock to the Movies”:
While much of the economy is teetering between bust and bailout, the movie industry has been startled by a box-office surge that has little precedent in the modern era. Suddenly it seems as if everyone is going to the movies, with ticket sales this year up 17.5 percent, to $1.7 billion, according to Media by Numbers, a box-office tracking company.
Okay, so sales up during this recession. What about previous ones?
Historically speaking, the old saw that movies do well in hard times is not precisely true. The last time Hollywood enjoyed a double-digit jump in attendance was 1989, when the unemployment rate was at a comfortable 5.4 percent and the Gothic tone of that year’s big hit, “Batman,” seemed mostly the stuff of fantasy. That year, the number of moviegoers shot up 16.4 percent, according to Box Office Mojo, a box-office reporting service.
In 1982, theater attendance jumped 10.1 percent to about 1.18 billion (the top seller was “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial”) as unemployment rose sharply past 10 percent. Then admissions fell nearly 12 percent, an unusually sharp drop, in 1985 (the “Back to the Future” year), as the economy picked up — suggesting that theater owners have sometimes found fortunes in times of distress, and distress in good times.
Looks like there’s proof to the conventional wisdom.
UPDATE #2: Another year-to-year uptick for this weekend’s B.O.:
Meantime, the weekend’s $112 million in collective industry grosses marked a 15% improvement over the same frame last year, according to Nielsen EDI.
Year-to-date, 2009 is up just 3% — at $1.6 billion — but the modest nature of that rise is due only to seasonal fluctuations in the boxoffice calendar. In a stat that’s much more telling of the currently hot marketplace, the domestic boxoffice has notched year-over-year upticks over seven of eight weekends this boxoffice year.
7 out of 8 is highly unusual. Interesting to see how Watchmen opens.
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