via MG Siegler on Medium: (Why doesn’t he host his own blog?)
Attendance is never the number Hollywood touts because it’s never very impressive. It goes up slightly some years and some years it goes down a bit. Instead, they focus on “box office” which is a fancy term for revenue. But it’s also bullshit, because never explicity stated when touting “box office records” is that ticket prices increase each year. And more recently, 3D and IMAX have added substantially to the price of a ticket. In other words, they’re always juicing the numbers. This is the steroid era of Hollywood.
I enjoyed this post start to finish.
It reminds me of a point I’ve been thinking of lately but never enough substance to warrant me writing an entire entry – the fact that very few movies over the next 3 years will drive me to visit a theatre. The movies with the highest budgets, best effects and star actors are reboots, sequels, prequels, comic book adaptations and lots of explosions. I love film. While living in SF, I would see over 5 movies a month in theatres. There was a time where I spent all day at the theatre every Sunday. I loved it. While I’ve been to 5 movies in 2014 at a cinema, that number will further drop. Most of the reason is that fact that the nearest digital theatre is 1.5 hours away but also because very few movies are exciting anymore.