Could 2009 be the year of 3-D?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jan/02/us-box-office-preview

 

With US cinema attendance dropping in 2008, studios and exhibitors are looking to the summer's blockbusters in the format, such as Monsters Vs Aliens and James Cameron's Avatar, to attract new audiences

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January is the month known in Hollywood as the dumping ground, which seems an unreasonably narrow opportunity given the quality of American cinema these days. The studios will unleash their slew of sub-par nonsense in the coming weeks, but today is very light as 2009 gets under way with only one new release of note – Ed Zwick's wartime thriller Defiance, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber. The project was the talk of the town when it was announced at Cannes 2007, but the buzz died once people saw the finished product. The declining fortunes of the movie's moribund specialty distributor Paramount Vantage hasn't helped matters either, and the limited release probably won't live up to its name.

This means last weekend's reigning champions, a boisterous bunch led by Fox's hit comedy Marley & Me, can continue to make money untroubled by new blood. The week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is traditionally one of the biggest of the year and the gains made by Marley & Me, Paramount's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (it's released by Warner Bros in the UK), Disney's Bedtime Stories and MGM/UA's Valkyrie provided a useful year-end boost to the 2008 box office. At the final reckoning, 2008 box office came in at about $9.6bn (£6.57bn), just short of the all-time record of $9.68bn (£6.62bn) set in 2007.

Last year would have set a new record had Warner Bros gone ahead with its November launch of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The studio put the release back to this summer when it realised it didn't have a single bankable movie for the 2009 blockbuster season, which can't have left McG and Christian Bale, the director and star of Terminator: Salvation that's set to open on 22 May, feeling great. When Harry Potter vacated the Thanksgiving slot, in jumped a little picture called Twilight and the rest is history.

Except that in box-office terms, 2008 wasn't history. It almost was. Studio top brass love their box-office statistics because they create the illusion of success and handily side-step any sort of quality analysis. But the fact is that audiences, faced with an expanding array of alternative entertainment choices, are declining. Overall cinema attendance in 2008 actually dropped 5% from the previous year to just over 1.3bn, although Hollywood made up for the shortfall by raising ticket prices, as it always does. Studio executives – and their counterparts in the independent world – are terrified of the video game industry in particular because it's the biggest growth sector in entertainment and steals audiences. Cinema owners in particular are feeling the heat, which is why everyone is so excited about 3-D.

2008 saw several movies released in the revived format and this year it looks set to take off, with such anticipated blockbusters as Monsters Vs Aliens, A Christmas Carol and James Cameron's Avatar. The surge in the number of 3-D films in 2009 promises much considering how well the relatively limited releases of the Hannah Montana movie, Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Bolt did in 2008. The great thing about 3-D as far as cinema owners are concerned is they can charge a premium on tickets, just as they do with Imax screens. So audiences face another price hike, although all but the most cynical have to admit that 3-D and Imax are taking the theatrical experience in a new direction, something it sorely needs.

To get back to this weekend then, Marley & Me is expected to stay top and could reach a total gross of $100m (£68.4m) in the next few days if it grosses in the region of $25m (£17.1m), while The Curious Case of Benjamin Button could leapfrog the Adam Sandler family movie Bedtime Stories and surge towards $80m (£54.7m) with a second weekend haul of about $20m (£13.7m). Who'd have thought it? David Fincher's movie clocks in at nearly three hours and yet it's one of those rare movies that combines Oscar prospects with commercial appeal. Brad Pitt isn't known for opening a movie in the way that Will Smith does and he'll be enjoying the ride as Button heads for $100m (£68.4m). Bedtime Stories, the Tom Cruise Nazi thriller Valkyrie and Jim Carrey's Yes Man are expected to round out the top five.

Speaking of Smith, Sony's Seven Pounds has amassed less than $45m after two weekends. While that doesn't necessarily mean the man known as Mr July is losing his mojo, it does show that he's human after all and reminds us that audiences won't reward everything that's slung their way.