20A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 7, 2000 ARTS Shoddy pics make box office sick The WX'ashington Post LOS ANGELES - Blame it on "Survivor." Blame it on the political conventions. Blame it on the Olympics - oh, they haven't happened yet? But never, ever blame it on the movies. There has to be a reason why the box office total for summer 2000 is lagging well behind the 1999 numbers, why movie attendance is off a massive 10 percent from the year before.' But it couldn't be because "Nutty Professor II: The Klumps" wasn't very funny, or because "Me, Myself & Irene" kind of sagged, or because "Gone in 60 Seconds" was, um, boring. It couldn't be because there were practically no movies in theaters for children after mid-July and nothing at all for women, unless you count the fashion statement that was "Coyote Ugly." It couldn't be because there was vir- tually no counter-programming for lit- erate filmgoers - no Jane Austen sequels, no "Saving Private Ryans" - well, except for John Waters' "Cecil B. Demented." Good movies. Is it so much to ask? What's a movie fan to do? "Last year we had the biggest Labor Day weekend ever, S29 million, because of the holdover from 'The Sixth Sense.' This year we're not going to have anything close to that," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, the company that tallies box office revenues. "We're gonna end with a whimper, whereas last year we went out with a bang.:" Overall, in the 15 weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day, movie- goers spent S2.7 billion on movie tick- ets thiis year, down from S2.9 billion last year. It's a small drop, but when you figure that ticket prices have risen and atten- dance is way down, says Dergarabedi- an: "Times are not good." The summer of 2004 started with more promise, kicking off with the DoeamWorks epic adventure film "Cladiator," which took in S183 mil- lJon, and then the Tom Cruise action sick "Mission: Impossible 2," the sum- mer's highest-grossing picture, which took in $213 million. Overall, 11 movies raked in more than SIOO million each, the general benchmark these days for a successful film. But most of those movies _ "The Perfect Storm," "Dinosaur," "The Patri- ot" _ cost at least that much to produce. ("Dinosaur" is estimated to have cost about $200 million and so far has brought in S134 million in domestic ticket sales.) And there were many expensive dis- appointments, not only the Farrelly Brothers' Jim Carrey comedy "Me, Myself & Irene," but the pricey animat- ed "Titan A.E.," which tanked at S23 million (it cost more than S60 million), the disastrous "Battlefield Earth" with John Travolta as a dreadlocked alien, the hollow premise of "Hollow Man" and the weak-spined "Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle." The biggest problem was that even when films had big opening weekends, audiences soon lost interest. "Me, Myself & Irene" took in S24 million its opening weekend, but by its second weekend, ticket sales had dropped 45 percent to S13 million. Similarly, the blockbuster "X-Men" had a huge opening weekend of S54.5 million, but its audience fell by more than half on the following weekend, when it made S23.5 million. And that was one of the summer's success sto- ries; "X-Men" has made S151 million so far. By contrast, last summer the audi- ences kept expanding with every pop- corn hit, from "Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace" to "Austin Pow- ers: The Spy Who Shagged Me" to "Tarzan" and "Big Daddy." Then in August, typically a doldrum period, came the "Blair Witch" phe- nomenon and the unexpected block- buster "The Sixth Sense," together taking in $310 million. This year? This year, August brought the psychological horror film "The Cell;' which has drawn fire for its over- the-top violence. After two weeks and S37 million, its run is almost through. The relative success of an obscure cheerleader movie, "Bring It On" (S17 million its first weekend), has led ana- lysts to wonder if audiences aren't des- perate for anything resembling entertainment. The one real success story this sum- mer was Miramax's raunchy parody "Scary Movie," which cost a paltry S19 million to make and has gobbled up $148 million at the box office. Brace yourself for a sequel. Many in Hollywood insist that this summer's performance is not so bad, really. "Tell your readers they're wrong," says Tom Sherak, chairman of 20th Century Fox's Domestic Film Group, when informed that many, many moviego- ers have complained that "there's nothing to see." "A lot of films did a lot of business this summer," Sherak says. "Gross- wise, it's the second-biggest summer in the history of the business." True enough, but the vibe has definitely been negative since July. What with an actors strike and the- ater chains filing for bankruptcy protection (could it be because there are too many movie screens and not enough good movies?), this summer has held little for Hollywood to cel- ebrate. "It's not all doom and gloom, but we just have to get people excited about going to movies again," Der- garabedian says. 01 To. 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