A memorable box office, but...

By R. Kinsey Lowe

May 31, 2005 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

Sometimes great isn’t quite good enough.

This weekend marked the first time that three films grossed $60 million or more apiece at the box office, yet it was only the second-best Memorial Day weekend, according to the tracking firm Nielsen EDI.

George Lucas’ “Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith,” in its second weekend, took in a little less than $71 million, while the animated comedy “Madagascar” grossed about $61 million and the prison-football movie remake “The Longest Yard” took in $60 million, studios estimated Monday.

Those are solid numbers by any measure but the other movies now in theaters fell way off (“Monster-in-Law” was a distant fourth with $11.1 million for the four days). “Revenge of the Sith,” meanwhile, has taken in $271.2 million in 12 days domestically and $504.4 million worldwide through Sunday, 20th Century Fox reported.

Even so, a troublesome slump relative to the comparable weekends in 2004 has stretched to 14 weeks, and year-to-date totals are still running as much as 5.6% behind the same period last year, according to the tracking firms Nielsen EDI and Exhibitor Relations Inc.

The record Memorial Day weekend of 2004 had two whoppers: the phenomenal second weekend for “Shrek 2” with $96.7 million and a strong $85.8 million for “The Day After Tomorrow.” Those two films took in $182.5 million for the four-day holiday, about $9 million less than the weekend total for this year’s top three.

“The key here is weaker movies beneath the top three,” observed Brandon Gray, president of Boxofficemojo.com, another tracking firm. “Last year had ‘Shrek 2,’ the opening of ‘Day After Tomorrow,’ with holdovers like ‘Troy’ and ‘Van Helsing.’ Business overall is weaker because Hollywood basically skipped the first two weekends in May, deferring to ‘Star Wars,’ ” Gray said.

In April and early May last year, “the movies were stronger and more appealing,” Gray said. “This weekend is encouraging in that the top 12 [Friday-Sunday] total is the third biggest of all time,” he said. “ ‘Longest Yard’ is by far the biggest opening ever for a sports-themed picture” -- and Adam Sandler’s biggest opening to boot.

Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, agreed that “with three films over $60 million, it shows people do want to go to the movies. To me it’s encouraging.”

“Fourteen weeks into a slump,” Dergarabedian said, “I think the movies just haven’t been as exciting as they need to be to get people into theaters. It can work. I think these are really encouraging numbers. When I look at these numbers objectively -- $70 million, $61 million, $60 million -- that’s a great weekend, nothing to be complaining about.”

The past two weekends have narrowed the current year-to-date’s estimated gap from roughly 7% to about 5.6%, according to Nielsen EDI. For all films released so far, that puts Hollywood about $190 million behind the $3.4 billion movies had taken in domestically by this time last year.

Admissions, or the number of people buying tickets, are down even more, especially considering price inflation. Dergarabedian of Exhibitor Relations estimated that attendance is down 8%.

Boxofficemojo’s Gray thinks it’s even lower. “Attendance is down between 9% and 10%, with ticket-price inflation, so there is a hole to climb out of by the end of the year.”

“But there is a natural ebb and flow,” Gray pointed out. “There was an unusual inflation in popularity for 2002,” led by “Spider-Man” and, among others, “Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones,” “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” and the second Harry Potter and “Lord of the Rings” movies.

“This may be a part of a natural cooling off after that,” he added. “In 2002, more tickets were sold than in nearly 40 years, so you can’t really expect records to be broken every year.”

Observers have said that if you subtracted “The Passion of the Christ” from the 2004 equation, this year would look a lot better.

“ ‘The Passion’ appealed to people who didn’t go to movies. You had the extra kick of a once-in-a-lifetime event. You just don’t have a blockbuster of that type released in the first third of the year,” Gray said.

Even so, all these considerations would be moot, he said, “if Hollywood was releasing movies that people wanted to see.”

Among upcoming movies, Gray noted, “ ‘War of the Worlds’ is the clear favorite from here on out. ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ ‘Batman’ and ‘Herbie: Fully Loaded’ show a lot of promise, and ‘Fantastic Four’ could be a big surprise, but few movies stand out as potential mega-blockbusters, and that’s what we need to keep the momentum going.”

Hollywood can take heart, however. This is not yet the longest slump. The Nielsen service said that was a 17-week period in 1985, a year in which attendance dropped by 143 million tickets, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America.

Additionally, because admissions declined the past two years, the odds are against a third straight drop. In the last 25 years, MPAA and National Assn. of Theater Owners records show, attendance has never declined three years running.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Box Office

Preliminary results (in millions) based on studio projections.

*--* Movie Four-day gross Total Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith $70.8 $271.2

Madagascar 61 61

The Longest Yard 60 60

Monster- in-Law 11.1 60.7

Kicking & Screaming 6.6 44.2

Crash 6 36.1

The Interpreter 2.6 69.2

Unleashed 2.3 22

Kingdom of Heaven 2.2 45