View Along The Watchtower

Even Kong Can't Stop The Box Office Decline

Peter Jackson's version of 'King Kong' opened and took US$66million dollars at the Box Office. Still, it's not all cheery.

Director Peter Jackson's widely-hyped "King Kong" movie earned a less-than-expected $66 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices in its five-day debut, highlighting film industry woes and changing audience habits in a year when ticket revenues are now expected to fall more than 5 percent.

Hollywood executives have been racking their brains this year trying to determine if the popularity of DVDs, video games and the Web have combined with bad movies and complaints about a poor theater experience to send the industry into its slump.

The answer is not clear, and "Kong" was seen as a key test for box offices. The $200 million-plus movie is a major event of the holidays -- the second biggest movie-going season behind the summer -- and the film has been strongly reviewed.

Its backer Universal Pictures expected "Kong" to earn about $75 million for the five days, which is roughly equal to Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," the first of his Oscar-winning trilogy.

For some time now, Box Office receipts have been declining for movies. It's getting to the point that studios are thinking of releasing the DVD of the picture at the same time as the theatrical release; and that's a move that would really leave exhibitors out to hanging dry. There are many factors contributing to the decline: DVDs and the proliferation of Home Cinema phenomenon where people would rather buy the DVD and own the picture than stand in line at the cinema with people they would rather not share time, just to see it once.

I can name 10 blockbusters in the last year I've simply waited for DVDs, and then waited even longer fo those DVDs to fall in prices. It simply doesn't matter to me that I'm watching it on my screen at home, 12months afte the cinema release because most of these blockbusters, frankly, suck and aren't worth considering as conversation fodder. Indeed, the number of times I've had people tell me that they "saw [insert big budget film title here], and it was crap" is staggering. And when you do get to see them, indeed it's none too great either. I caught up with the Matrix sequels paying bargain bin prices for the discs, watching them at home. They were so bad I wanted that time of my life back.

Kids are moving on too. They have computer games with which they can interact. Sitting through 90minutes to 120minutes, just passivley watching a movie just isn't going to be as appealing as playing the latest computer game on he X-box360 or Sony PS3 (when it arrives). People want to participate. It's exactly the factor that brought about the rise of dance music and the demise of rock music; In the long run, games will be the demise of blockbuster cinema - unless of course the story is good.

Then there is the ever-present pirates who provide 'free' copies to the market place, but that's another topic I've already covered.

Let Them Play Games I Say
I don't know if I've posted this idea up before. It's so banal, I probably already have.
Once of the things that kids in Iraq don't have and kids in the first world is computer games. Really, the first thing the US military should have done in Iraq after the initial conflict was to hand out Sony PS2s and MS Xboxes to every kid under 18.
What would this achieve?

1) Take the will away from the Iraqi children to particpiate in even thinking about political issues or activities.
2) ideologically indoctrinate them into accepting a Pro-US/Pro-Western view of the world. If they don't like it, they can develop their own computer games, but they have to learn how to first.
3) It would give them a reason not to blow up infrastructure. You need electricity to play this stuff.
4) They won't feel so poor and deprived if they have something with which to kill time.

It would be an investment into the cultural enlightening of the future Iraqis.
How much more expensive could this be than the constant fighting they're doing now? It's a country with a population of about 20 million, Had they done so, we're still talking about 10million kids. Hand them out games that take a long time to play through. That's 400bucks per unit with 3 games each, let's say. You buy bulk so knock off a huge margin. and say $250 er unit with the games. It's only 2.5billion and that's an inflated guesstimate of handing out 10 million sets. That's peanuts compared to what they pay Halliburtons. :)