At my theater, I calculated that we show around 150 different movies per yer. Not prints, but titles. How many of them are any good? Usually around 10 to 15. That's pretty bad percentage, there. This is why people don't come to the movies as often. It is also why Titanic did so well. People were starved for a well made, quality motion picture!

Does Hollywood not feel the financial bite of the dwindling box office? Or are the studio execs just so moronic that they are blind to what is going on? I also think that home videos are released way too soon to their theatrical counterparts. This tends to make more people say "I'll just wait for the video and rent it."

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And what happens AFTER X-Men? I mean that's the closet action packed eye-candy adventure flick that even comes close to Cameron caliber. Isn't this the time of year when those type of blockbusters are supposed to come out? Isn't that what summer movies are all about? Mind numbing, ear assaulting enterainment? I guess those summers are dying out. Or maybe we're just getting to desensitized to visual effects to enjoy them anyone.

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The studios pump out so many titles because it doesn't make sense for them to keep a few titles in circulation for long. I hesitate to correct an earlier post, but the studios take 90% of the first (or best) week's gross, with that cut declining by 10% a week until it stabilizes at an even split. (For more on this, read, "We don't make 'em, Lady, We only show 'em" on my website.)

That's why they carpet-bomb the countryside with prints. They take as much as they can the first two or three weeks and then throw up something new. They don't give a rat's ass about the exhibitors, and the exhibitors know it.

kenn

I remember one of my favorite movies, Spaceballs, when Mel Brooks was making fun of this very fact by haveing the Space Balls movie released before the movie was finished.

Unless it's something you want really really want to see, it's often worth waiting for it to come to video 2-6 months later. There are still tons of people who don't care about "The big screen digital experience." and just want to see the movie. For them, waiting is fine. That and video stores have a selection no movie theater can top. So there's plenty else to watch while you're waiting for it to be released.

Now added to that group are the audio/video enthusiasts who play DVD movies at home in better quality than quite a few theaters I'm aware of. Plus, as one of my a/v enthusiast friends said to me recently about my theater's offerings: "you don't get the cool DVD extras at the theater." In which I responded: "Uh...well, we have uh...big standees with Squirrels and stuff on them." He promptly pointed to his Darth Vader cardboard cutout.

It used to be you went to a theater to get something you couldn't get at home. Now home viewers seem to get more than the theaters do.

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"And the monkey flips the switch."
- Major Don West, "Lost In Space"

It is: The "bigness" of it all. Big picture...big sound...big crowd.

A moviegoer once told me: "The thing I like about going to the movies is, 'the size of the sound.'" I like that.

The trailers now are 2 and a half minutes long and give you the plot, characters, story outline, all the best lines and action, and sometimes even the ending. You see the movie before you see the movie. Then it isnt even fun! Trailers like MI2, Gone in 60 nanoseconds (like my attention span), star trek 217 (the search for anyone who gives a damn anymore).

Dave