Box Office Slump Unlikely To End Soon

(From The Hartford Courant -- By Deborah Hornblow)

OK, so there's a slump at the box office.

A 19-week, studio-moguls-biting-their-nails kind of slump. The most prolonged downturn since analysts began tracking box office figures, and longest since 1985, the year of a 17-week slump.

Not even last week's release of WAR OF THE WORLDS, the blockbuster STEVE SPIELBERG-TOM CRUISE movie, was enough to rescue sagging receipts at the multiplexes both here and abroad.

In domestic markets, WAR took in a respectable $113.3 million over its six-day opening stretch, but its receipts came in well below those of SPIDERMAN 2, which last summer reeled in $180.1 million in its record FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND.

WAR's solid but less-than-hoped-for grosses might have had something to do with the star-spangled holiday weekend weather, the sort that inhibits people from spending two hours in a dark theater. Then too, the wacky behavior of the feral-eyed SCIENTOLOGY guy Cruise in the weeks leading up to the film's release may have alienated some potential audience members.

Whatever the factors, WAR did not cure the ailing box office, and with the film's opening weekend accounted for, an unsettling truth remains -- domestic box office numbers lag 7% behind the admittedly boffo 2004 (three of the 10 biggest hits of all time came out last year).

Critics point to the dearth of quality fare at the multiplex, where remakes, sequels, TV adaptations, copycat pictures and special-effects orgies rule the marquees. But it's not just the critics who grumble that there is too little that is compelling or original on view.

Box Office Slump Unlikely To End Soon