In response to the first good overall weekend in a long time, Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations said "I think this puts to bed the notion that people don't want to go to movies anymore."
While this remark is pretty dumb, to say the least, it is also dead wrong. What this does is simply postpone for a short while what will happen. Hollywood has taken everything they've got and thrown it at the screen this year. What they are trying to do is buy time. The tremendous changes happening in the entertainment industry has them scrambling all over as their days of influence are diminishing.
While it's not necessarily a bad strategy, contrary to the music industry's fiasco, it's still a temporary fix.
Let's face it, they're caught in a difficult position, as we talked about here. They are trying to figure out how to slowly embrace the new realities without totally abandoning all their old alliances. It's becoming impossible to do as we already said.
The reason they are pushing with everything they have is because they must keep their allies in the fold long enough to keep making money during the transition. What would they do if their relationship with theater owners deteriated before they made the transition? The whole thing would collapse.
This should be a good year for the box office, but it could very easily be the last hurrah before the digital transfer takes dominant hold of the industry.
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