US may be in recession, but Americans are flocking to the cinema. Stephen Foley, Business and Finance Journalist of the Year, reports
Recession, what recession? Well you might ask, if only you were a Hollywood executive. Business is booming at the box office this year - not just in spite of the gloomy economic times, but perhaps because of them.
The industry is still catching its breath from news that Fast & Furious, the fourth film in Universal Studios' street-racing series, just tore up the record for the most lucrative opening weekend for a movie released in April, and now studio bosses are hoping that 2009 might be the first year that they reap more than $10bn (6.8bn) in ticket sales.
Adding in the $71m just taken by Fast & Furious, receipts are up by 15 per cent so far this year, and only a little part of that is because of inflation in ticket prices. Attendances are up 13 per cent, too. Just about every other part of the leisure industry has found itself under duress since the recession began and consumers began drawing in their horns.
But the cinema is "recession-proof", says Brandon Gray, the president of Box Office Mojo, which collates box office data. "It would take a near-cataclysm to keep people away from theatres. There is always a place for art. People need the movies, they inspire, they provide catharsis, they make people laugh, they thrill them - and all that is needed now more than ever."
Fast & Furious, starring Vin Diesel, is good escapist fare, a straight-out-the-box welding of cars, guns and attractive women. But more nuanced films have also been hits. The "$100m club" of six movies with the biggest box office take in 2009 includes Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino and Oscar-winner Slumdog Millionaire. Sleeper success stories such as the Liam Neeson thriller Taken and Kevin James's comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop have been hits for stars who have not previously carried a hit movie. It is not the type of movies that are on offer, so much as the value that movies offer which is driving people to the multiplex.
Gitesh Pandya, the editor of BoxOfficeGuru.com, says: "This is happening across almost every genre. We always expect a certain type of movie to do a certain amount of business at a certain time of year, but this year, a lot of movies are over-performing against expectations, not just one or two. Going to the movies is cheap and easy. Theatres are everywhere, there's a steady supply of commercial films, and a ticket is cheaper than any other type of entertainment outside the home."
Charlotte Jones, a movie industry analyst at the London-based consulting group Screen Digest, says that there is a broadly inverse historical correlation between cinema attendance and the economy. In other words, since the silver screen was first illuminated, we have taken refuge in its glow during recessions. The early years of the Great Depression, when more than 60 million Americans would head to the cinema every week, are often depicted as a golden age for Hollywood, although unemployment rates soaring 25 per cent eventually overwhelmed booming attendance. The biggest year for admissions in recent decades was in 2002, the year of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars sequels, but also a year of rising unemployment in the wake of the dot.com bust.
In 2002, the number of admissions peaked at 1.6 billion in North America, but they are expected to get back up to 1.4 billion this year, according to Ms Jones, and she is being conservative in assuming that the record-breaking growth of the first quarter abates a little. She says the resurgence cannot be explained away by a healthy crop of movies. "What we are seeing is a re-evaluation of cinema as a relatively inexpensive and escapist form of entertainment," she said.
Box Office Mojo's Mr Gray cautions that things are still volatile, that Hollywood moguls should not start counting their money just yet. Cinema attendance in December last year was the worst for that month in a decade, he said, and the same was true last month when comic book spin-off Watchmen didn't hit the numbers that were hoped of it, for example. But January and February both set new records.
"It has been an up and down period at the box office," Mr Gray said. "Fast & Furious and other high performing movies are not flukes. When the movies are appealing, people will go and see them, that is the bottom line here."
Hollywood executives are pretty confident about the summer, though. This is where they have been concentrating resources. So far this year, the number of movies put out on wide release is down by about 14 per cent, as the studios put their eggs in a basket of sequels and remakes. Star Trek, Terminator, Transformers, Harry Potter ... the list goes on.
This is, of course, an industry prone to delivering spectacular flops and frozen turkeys, but Mr Pandya of BoxOfficeGuru also puts himself in the optimistic camp. These are old familiars, comfort food for the economic hunger - and the movies are already in a self- reinforcing spiral upwards.
