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Movie theater shares down after holiday weekend
posted by
Michael Zoldessy
on
June 8, 2010 at 7:40 am
Despite the many popular sequels released, this past Memorial Day was a step down from last year.
Merriman Curhan Ford analyst Eric Wold wrote in a client note that U.S. box office sales of $186.2 million were 12.1 percent higher than in the same period last year — but they were 14 percent lower than last year’s Memorial Day weekend. In 2009, Memorial Day fell a week earlier.
That brings the total for the second quarter so far to $1.65 billion, a 3.7 percent decline from last year. The decline, along with overall market weakness, has weighed on shares of Regal Entertainment Group, Cinemark Holdings Inc. and Carmike Cinemas Inc.
Read the full story from the Associated Press.
Comments (7)
I have many thoughts on this – high ticket prices and premium fees I think are both overrated by analysts and unnecessary to a good degree. Perhaps weak films don’t help: the big tent pole movies sucked including Shriek Forever After and Sex & The City 2, I guess there’s not much optimism for The A-Team. There was a whole string of recent films that I thought sucked, the aforemented and Price of Persia, Kites, MacGruber, The Back Up Plan, Robin Hood. The good were under the radar or marginal hits (on the mainstream side): The Losers, Letters to Juliet, Just Wright, Get Him to the Greek, Splice. On the indie side – I have no idea what will be a break out hit this summer, but then again I suppose that’s the awesome thing about a break out hit, who knows. But I haven’t seen a trailer that screamed out to me the way the (500) Days of Summer one did this time last summer.
So far this is one of the worst summers ever. Even Iron Man 2 was just a B+. I expect Toy Story 3 & Inception to be the highest grossing flicks of the summer.
John J. Fink: The Back Up Plan & The Losers were April titles. Flicks from April aren’t classified as summer movies.
The problem of lower sales is that the garbage factories in Hollywood are churning out boooooooooring flicks too darned fast and too often. I’m fed up with repeat plots, slam-bang explosions and dreary scripts from a bunch of scruffy looking unknowns.
And WHY do they announce the box office receipts in “dollars” and not “headcount?” Various cinemas, in different cities, charge different first run admission prices and I’m not including the Matinee’s, Seniors, Military, Handicapped and crying babies, etc.
It’s MORE interesting to know how many patrons went to a show!!!
Simon I totally agree with you. Tell me how is Joe doing?
The Losers was terrible. The whole film served as a preview of why Chris Evans should not be playing Captain America.
Also, I don’t understand why more films weren’t scheduled on May 28th. Both titles looked weak to begin with so why not put two or three more movies in the mix?
Hello John M…
Thank you for asking about JOE MUSIL… My dear friend has been in a local hospital for over two months now. Joe is very ill and I’m really concerned about the future of his magnificent theatrical museum.
Please keep in touch with me:
Only three more days until TS3 comes out and more than a month until inception comes out…I predict TS3 will make $500 million and Inception $250m.