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The Big Screen Keeps Pulling Us In

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

If this noisy summer of box office braggadocio proves anything, it’s the durability of the moviegoing experience, a phenomenon that has outlasted and transformed itself through every prediction of its demise from TV to pay-per-view.

After falling since its World War II-era heyday, American movie spending during the last 18 months has hit some of its highest levels in generations. Clearly, some of the growth is the result of ever-rising ticket prices and movie release tactics that saturate the marketplace to inflate opening-weekend box-office numbers.

But in other respects, the boom appears to be living up to its own hype, reflecting a true resurgence in an American pastime, despite the proliferation of other entertainment choices.

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Movies aren’t just surviving, they’re also thriving:

* Movie ticket sales in 2001 reached their highest total in 40 years. Box-office receipts for 2002 are running about 20% higher, with $4 billion spent since January, according to Exhibitor Relations Co. Inc., a box-office tracking firm.

* Blockbusters are climbing the charts: “Spider-Man” has become one of the 10 biggest-grossing films of all time, and “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones” should reach the $300-million mark soon. More potential blockbusters lie in wait: “Men in Black II,” “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and “XXX” open this summer, and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” are due at year’s end.

* High-grossing movies have been premiering almost weekly, beginning with “The Scorpion King” ($36.2 million) in April and continuing with “Spider-Man” ($114 million), “Scooby-Doo” ($56.4 million) and two studios claiming the top spot for the weekend of June 21 (“Lilo & Stitch” and “Minority Report,” each with grosses of more than $30 million.)

* Four of the 10 top-grossing films of all time have been released in the last four years.

“The numbers really are astronomical,” said John Fithian, president of the National Assn. of Theater Owners. “We’re seeing increased moviegoing across age demographics and across social demographics.”

A combination of factors continues to raise movie attendance: saturation releases, the proliferation of multiplexes, the release of a variety of films that appeal to different age groups and genders, and more marketing than ever before.

In 1946, movies lured 46% of the American public every week. Today, it’s 14%. Still, movies continue to draw while other mass entertainments have stagnated or declined. Attendance has dropped this season at major league baseball, NFL and NBA games. Prime time television audiences for major networks continue to fall as cable channels proliferate. In pop music, sales of blank CDs outstripped sales of recorded music for the first time last year.

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Why do Americans still go to movies when it’s so easy to dial up a pay-per-view feature? “We’re drawn to the ‘electronic campfire,’ ” says Roderick Nash, professor emeritus of history at UC Santa Barbara. “We can rent movies and watch TV, but we still feel the need to gather together as groups around some object of interest.”

It’s also about storytelling, says Michael Marsden, a provost at Eastern Kentucky University and an editor of the Journal of Popular Film and Television. Bring on the stories, even if they are sequels. “Repetition is not a sin. We like repetition with a variance that becomes the point of interest for us in the storytelling process,” he said.

So audiences continue to gather at the movies, especially drawn to spaces that have captured some of the flash, the neon, the sense of occasion of the grand movie palaces of the 1930s and ‘40s. Those grand movie palaces made it acceptable for people of all classes to go to the movies, Marsden said.

On a recent weekend at the Irvine Spectrum, “Star Wars” was showing 23 times a day. So Ryan Huttenberger, 17, of Lake Forest met his friends there, knowing there would be plenty to do while waiting for his film in an entertainment mall filled with restaurants, ice cream shops, video-game parlors and other teens.

“It might be an hour wait, but here, there’s stuff to do,” said Huttenberger. “Stuff” includes checking out “the scene” and “the honeys.”

Lea Deakin of Oceanside turns out for movies about half a dozen times a year and only for event movies or special-effects movies.

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“The vibe, the energy of opening nights of certain movies: There’s something about opening night. The crowd’s into it,” Deakin said.

They’re into it because they’ve bought into the hype. According to the Motion Picture Assn. of America, production expenses decreased in 2001 while marketing budgets increased. On average, studios spent $78.1 million on a film ($47.7 million for production and $31.01 million for marketing.)

But receipts made it all worthwhile, MPAA Chairman Jack Valenti said in his address on the industry’s financial health in March 2002 at ShoWest, a convention of exhibitors, studio representatives and concession vendors. With more than $8 billion in receipts, 2001 was the “greatest box-office year in film history,” he said.

Big-budget movies don’t get made unless they’re marketable, said producer Tom Pollock, a partner at the Montecito Picture Co. and former head of Universal Studios. “Sometimes the movies are really good, and sometimes the movies are not very good, but they’re still marketable,” Pollock noted.

When a studio can market a movie and convince the public it’s an “event,” people feel compelled to go. Tom Sherak, a partner at Revolution Studios and former head of distribution at Fox, said event movies that deliver lift attendance sky-high.

“If ‘Spider-Man’ wasn’t a good movie, with all the marketing in the world it would have been an event to open, but it wouldn’t have stayed an event,” Sherak said.

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Studio marketing departments are widening the net demographically. They’re not interested in just attracting males in their teens and 20s, they’re after the whole family.

A quick spin through the 10 top-grossing domestic films of all time reveals only G through PG-13 ratings. “Titanic,” “Star Wars” and “E.T.” inhabit the top spots; further down the list are “Harry Potter” and “The Lion King.”

Candi McDaniel of Villa Park takes her children to the movies year-round but more frequently during the summer, often returning to a movie if one of the children wasn’t able to go on a previous trip. “It’s an outing. It’s different than being at home,” she said.

Taking the kids to the movies remains relatively cheap, at least compared with some other entertainment options. In the last decade, ticket prices have increased 34%, and still the median price per ticket across the nation for last year was $5.66. Four movie tickets, at $5.66 each, cost $22.64. Four lower-priced seats for a weekend performance of “The Lion King” cost $128.

Four of the lowest-priced tickets to a Laker game cost $64, but that’s not the total cost of the evening. According to Team Marketing Report, a family of four spends an average of $145 to $300 at a live sports event.

Movie admissions approaching $10 take a bite out of a 17-year-old’s allowance. But Huttenberger says it just forces him to be choosier. “It makes you judge if it’s worth the money.”

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Fithian thinks that better movie houses have contributed to the boom. In the last seven or eight years, theater owners have gone through the biggest building and remodeling phase of their history, he said.

The recent bankruptcy reorganization of some theater chains helped owners shed older properties.

“Most movie theater companies have upgraded with innovations like stadium seating and digital sound systems,” Fithian said.

With movies playing more often, in nicer theaters, is there a limit?

“We’ve always said, ‘Can it expand?’ And now it seems to be happening,” said Sherak. “When you see a $200-million weekend in May, if the pictures in June live up to it and July and August live up to it, you’re looking at a business [in which] not only box office will be up, but admissions and attendance will be up.”

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