Hollywood wrapping up another disappointing year

While the holiday weekend was strong, overall box office grosses for the year are down 4.2 percent from 2010 and attendance is off 5 percent (even though ticket prices are higher). The problem isn't so much in the opening weekends, but the second, third and fourth weekends after that. From the WSJ:

"It's been a strange year in terms of ups and downs," says Patrick Corcoran, the director of media and research for the trade organization the National Association of Theater Owners. Box-office receipts for the first quarter of this year were down 22% from the same period in 2010, when "Avatar" and "Alice in Wonderland" did big business. Then the summer box office, led by blockbusters like "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2" and "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," reached a new record of $4.4 billion. But then the bottom fell out again, as several of the big holiday-season movies fell short.

From the NYT:

What has gone wrong? Plenty, say studio distribution executives, who point to competition for leisure dollars, particularly among financially pressed young people (the movie industry's most coveted demographic); too many family movies; and the continued erosion of star power. One more thing: "You have to go back and look at the content," said Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Brothers. "Good movies always rise to the occasion. Bad ones, not so much."