Americans Take Refuge at Movies

Movie attendance held steady over the weekend, calming theater owners’ fears that ongoing news coverage of Tuesday’s terrorist attacks would keep large numbers of patrons glued to their TV sets.

Overall box-office business nationwide fell an estimated 11.7% from last weekend, based on the top 12 performing movies, but that is a fairly typical showing for a post-Labor Day fall weekend.

Paramount Pictures’ new youth-oriented drama “Hardball,” starring Keanu Reeves as a down-on-his-luck gambler who pays his debt by coaching a kids baseball team, was the top-grossing movie with $10.1 million.

Another new release, Sony Pictures’ teen thriller “The Glass House,” with Leelee Sobieski, came in second with $6.1 million.

“History has taught us that when these tragedies happen, we haven’t seen them affect the box office in a major way,” said Paul Dergarabedian, president of box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co. “This weekend’s results [are] typical of what happens in mid-September, even taking the tragedy into account,” he said.

Regal Cinemas Inc., the nation’s largest circuit with 338 theaters and 4,000 screens, reported “no dramatic shift in . . . attendance as a direct result of Tuesday’s tragedy,” said its senior vice president of marketing, Dick Westerling.

Rick King, spokesman for Kansas City, Mo.-based AMC Entertainment Inc., said weekend business at the chain’s 160 U.S. theaters was “on par with what we would have expected. . . . It’s a sign that people are returning to normal patterns of behavior.”

Moviegoing on Friday, which was declared a national day of mourning, was “very soft,” said Jerry Pokorski, head film buyer for the Los Angeles-based Pacific Theatres chain. Saturday saw “a bigger-than-usual bounce because people were looking for some kind of escape and semblance of normal life.”

With this weekend’s cancellation of National Football League and Major League Baseball games, Pokorski said business Sunday might have jumped 5% to 10%.

On Saturday evening at the AMC 14 multiplex in Century City, there was a steady stream of moviegoers. “Tonight I just wanted to see something funny,” said Jon Hultman, who purchased tickets to the comedy “Legally Blonde.”

At the Fox Westwood Village Theatre on Saturday night, Ralph Sall, 38, went to see “Rock Star,” starring Mark Wahlberg and Jennifer Aniston. The film was a welcome relief, Sall said, after having watched the news “pretty much nonstop” and learning that his neighbor and neighbor’s young son had been on one of the hijacked planes. Sall, a record producer, said he wanted to see a movie for “a little escapism.”

Indeed, that sentiment seemed widespread across the country. Comedies such as “Rat Race,” “American Pie 2” and “Rush Hour 2” showed lighter drops than is typical for films at similar stages in their release.

This weekend’s business was up 43% to $54.1 million from the same weekend a year ago, Dergarabedian said. However, he noted that a year ago, weekend receipts were the lowest in three years.

Some theater owners hoped that the postponement of sporting events--and a lack of regular TV programming--would draw people to movies for a much-needed diversion. But ultimately the traffic depends in large part on the popularity of the films in the marketplace at the time.

“As long as there are good films out there, people will go see them because they need an outlet, an escape,” Dergarabedian said.

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, box-office revenues were up for eight consecutive weeks. In the first weekend after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, business was up 48% from the same weekend a year earlier.

On Tuesday, many chains shut down for the day, including Regal Cinemas, AMC and United Artists Theatre Circuit Inc.

Some theaters, including United Artists’ Union Square theater in Manhattan, were turned into shelters before reopening later in the week. Others, including United’s theater in lower Manhattan’s Battery Park, remained closed with substantial damage.

By Wednesday, most theater owners reported that business had returned to normal levels and remained so for the rest of the week.

However, that didn’t hold true for all chains.

“Business was off substantially this weekend--probably 50%--from what I was projecting,” said Neal Pinsker, executive vice president of operations for Denver-based United Artists, which operates 212 theaters in the U.S. “Business was off 30 to 40% from last weekend.”

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Staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.