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Just for the record this weekend's take was down 24% from last year which leaves the summer season down 5.6% behind last year while overall 2000 is up 4.8%. ACNielsen EDI says "It would be a struggle to catch up now." CNN analyst agrees but adds "Who would have thought Sixth Sense would do 200 million." The part that bothers me is that a rising tide lifts all boats and a good season for the big guys means a good year for the smaller theatres also. The last years have been so consistently good that it's a little odd to deal with flat performance.

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Mike Hurley
www.bigscreenbiz.com

You are 100% correct. It is really hard to deal with the current slump. This will be the first year in the last 5 that we have gone down in our yearly grosses. Do you see it changing? It doesn't look to me like we are going to have a Sixth Sense this year. Sure could use one that would make September/October good. I can't remember the last really big sleeper that hit in the fall.
The last one that really surprised me was "Look Who's Talking", and that's a really long time ago.

There is always cycles and we seem to be slumping in both quality and interest. Is there a misjudging the audience when Me, Myself, and Irene misfires? Fox apologized to me for getting it wrong with the R even while they try to claim "highest weekend gross for an original r rated comedy" which made me feel like "longest break dance by a midget wearing a Santa suit" record may be in the offing. Sometimes there seems to be too much of everything! TV, Radio, internet (though the net movie sites are off 30% from last year!) just take up time. I always take comfort that the creative types are out there working hard and will astonish us.

We are now having our best July ever. Hard to believe. Storm really pulled it up! And that has made us up for the year over last also. But I think they're preparing us for a hard fall; double entendre' with few exciting pics between now and ThanksG.