There is no business like show business. This adage proved to still hold true as movie/entertainment industry and their exchange traded fund (ETF) held onto decent results at the theaters.
Ticket sales in North American movie theaters totaled $9.6 billion, down 1% compared to the previous year, and attendance shrunk 5% to 1.3 billion, reports Brooks Barnes for The New York Times. Executives must also deal with diminishing DVD sales, a mainstay for profits, and labor disputes with the Screen Actors Guild.
Parent companies on the studio lots are demanding more thrifty studio operations and maybe even selling non-core units, specialty film divisions, to mitigate television, publishing, and consumer product woes.
Americans are becoming numbed to a stars’ prowess, but the ability of stars to open a movie remains powerful and quite lucrative in overseas markets.