Less than stellar

While movie fans may remember 2003 as the year of a brave clown fish, a loopy pirate and a reluctant king who saves Middle-earth, number crunchers at the studios may not look back on this year as fondly.

When adjusted for inflation, admissions appear to be down as much as 4% this year, and domestic box office revenue is down for the first time in more than a decade.

The domestic box office gross for 2003 is expected to be about $8.9 billion, compared with last year’s record-breaking $9.3 billion, according to box office tracking firm Nielsen EDI, which uses the studio business calendar that began last Jan. 6 and will conclude after the New Year’s weekend. Calculating by a regular calendar year, the dollar decline is somewhat less and the yearly total is closer to $9 billion.

The decline is due mainly to the lack of mid-level adult-oriented films that inspire occasional moviegoers to get out more often, said Jeff Blake, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment.

“For domestic box office to be really healthy we need to have high end [movies], inexpensive genre [films] and a middle,” he said. “And I think the middle is getting squeezed. Those are the films that bring back infrequent moviegoers -- particularly adults.... If you just have a box office of extremes, that is always a concern.”

Blake said expensive event films like Sony’s “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” may not have lived up to expectations domestically, but they generally make money abroad and in DVD sales.

“That solid $50- to $60-million picture is getting harder and harder to have as a staple, particularly dramas,” he said.

The drop this year is also due to the absence of unexpected bookend hits like last year’s $241-million-grossing “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and the $403.7-million-grossing “Spider-Man,” which helped lure more moviegoers to theaters, said Andrew Hindes, an executive at Nielsen EDI.

“This year they attracted less moviegoers than the year before,” said Hindes. “But last year was an amazing year, so you have to take it somewhat with a grain of salt.”

Originality pays off

Still, the studios could glean some lessons from their experiences.

In a period bloated with sequels, originality paid off.

Disney’s “Finding Nemo,” from Pixar Animation Studios, and “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, demonstrated the value of good storytelling, bringing in $340 million and $305 million, respectively, in domestic box office alone.

“We looked at all the sequels and said let’s try a different thing,” said Chuck Viane, Disney’s head of domestic distribution, referring to the competitors’ slates. Although studios are grappling with an increasingly fragmented audience, Disney hits like “Bringing Down the House,” “Freaky Friday,” “Pirates” and “Nemo” scored among all age groups and both genders.

Its lineup of family-oriented entertainment earned Disney a company-record year with $1.52 billion in domestic box office revenues. Sony Pictures Entertainment holds the studio record with $1.55 billion last year.

But all the studios struggled with a rapidly accelerating challenge: bad word of mouth. Cellphones, instant messaging and the Internet have made word of mouth all the more powerful and can make or break a movie within days.

Widely released movies (opening at 3,000 theaters, give or take 500) dropped off an average of 51% this summer between their first weekend and their second, Nielsen EDI said. Five years ago, the decline averaged 40.1%. Particularly in the blockbuster summer months, the casualty rate was high and studio marketers could do little to stem the tide.

“The Hulk” opened with an impressive-enough $62 million but fell 69.7% by its second weekend. “2 Fast 2 Furious” started off with $50.4 million but dipped 63% the following weekend. “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” opened to a disappointing $37 million and then saw its fortunes crash by 62.8% within a week.

In a class by itself, the much-maligned “Gigli” plunged faster than the scariest summer thrill ride -- a disastrous $3.7-million opening weekend, followed by a record-breaking second-weekend drop of 81.9%.

“Gigli’s” stars, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, perhaps endured the year’s most humiliating box office experience. But the year was rough on other celebrities, many of whom get $20-million paychecks, or percentages of revenue that approach or exceed that amount.

Julia Roberts’ “Mona Lisa Smile” has grossed only $31.5 million, Denzel Washington’s “Out of Time” brought in only $41 million, Harrison Ford’s “Hollywood Homicide” dudded out at $30 million, Nicolas Cage’s “Matchstick Men” took in $37 million, Jackie Chan’s “The Medallion” grossed $22 million ($2 million more than the star was allegedly paid) and John Travolta’s “Basic” cashed in only $27 million.

The jury is still out on Russell Crowe’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” and Tom Cruise’s “The Last Samurai” -- two very expensive historical epics ($135 million and $180 million, respectively) that will be lucky to squeak to $100 million domestically by the end of the box office year.

Although it’s not likely these stars will be taking pay cuts anytime soon, studios are increasingly less willing to shell out that kind of money on such risky ventures.

“I think that some of the films with the highest-paid actors will still perform really well if the material is adequate,” said Rolf Mittweg, New Line Cinema’s head of worldwide distribution and marketing. “It’s all about the script and the story.”

New Line should know. Though its gamble on the $300-million-plus “Lord of the Rings” trilogy has paid off, the studio is now focusing on low-budget, targeted films like “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Freddy vs. Jason.” Apart from those genre hits and the relative sure-thing “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” New Line pulled off a year-end surprise with “Elf,” a low-budget comedy that has taken in about $170 million domestically.

Although major studio pictures got a sobering dose of reality, the year was also difficult for smaller films. None of the so-called specialized, independent or art-house fare came close to last year’s phenomenal “Greek Wedding.” And while “Greek Wedding’s” success is considered an anomaly, well-regarded films such as “Dirty Pretty Things,” “In America” and “21 Grams” didn’t gain much traction at the box office. None of those has grossed more than $10 million.

Other specialized films like “Bend It Like Beckham,” “28 Days Later,” “Whale Rider,” “Mystic River” and “Lost in Translation” enjoyed relative commercial and critical success, but all their grosses combined don’t add up to “Greek Wedding’s” bonanza.

“I think the lesson to be learned from this year is that timing is everything,” said Bob Berney, head of Newmarket Films, which released “Whale Rider” in early June and saw it gross $21 million. “It is competitive, and the market can tap out. On the other hand, if the film finds an audience, the market can also expand exponentially. In August and in the fall, it got so jammed with films that it was very tough to survive.”

The unlikely survivors this year, however, were the documentaries. Americans turned out to see a broad range of documentaries, including a visual narrative on birds (“Winged Migration”), an uplifting spelling-bee contest (“Spellbound”), a surfing spectacle (“Step Into Liquid”) and the fly-on-the-wall drama of a convicted pedophile and his family (“Capturing the Friedmans”). Considering the budgets on these films range from $500,000 to $2 million, a solid hit can provide a boon for their distributors.

“These movies are among the best movies of the year,” said Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, which released the $11-million-grossing French-made “Winged Migration.”

“The audience is looking for something unique, and in documentaries and the animated area, filmmakers are delivering the quality. This year might be a fluke as far as volume, but I think every year the audience is conditioned to see at least one or two documentaries a year. I hope we can deliver.”

Times staff writer Patrick Day contributed to this report.