the box office

Movie Theater Audiences Shrank for the Fourth Summer in a Row

Though this summer’s domestic box office revenue was up a little less than one percent from last year, audiences actually got smaller. According to estimates, only about 543 million tickets were sold between Memorial Day and Labor Day 2011, marking the lowest count since 1997 and the fourth straight summer of declining attendance. Fittingly, the modest dollar increase can be attributed to an optical illusion: Tickets for 3-D movies are more expensive than regular ones, and eighteen such films were released in the summer of 2011. (Only seven 3-D movies came out during the summer of 2010.) [NYT]

Movie Theater Audiences Shrank for the Fourth Summer in a Row