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Stable Summer For Movie Business

The entertainment business, right now as always, is very popular and successful. Even though last year was pretty gloomy for box-office and there also were depressing prophecies about the future, the entertainment and movie business has rebounded with although not fantastic, but a very stable summer season.

Led by Johnny Depp`s "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man`s Chest," Hollywood will have rung up about $3.85 billion only in domestic ticket sales from the first weekend, up 6.3 percent from the same period last year, according to box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. Factoring in higher ticket prices, movie attendance was up about 3.1 percent. For summer 2005, revenues declined 8.5 percent and attendance tumbled 11.4 percent compared to 2004`s. However, this summer`s entertainment industry revenues will come in about 2 to 3 percent below those of 2004, a strong box-office season. This summer`s attendance will be down about 8 percent compared to 2004`s.

Last year brought continual bad headlines as the flop of the week hit theaters, with Hollywood`s overall revenues down weekend after weekend. Entertainment industry analysts theorized that home theaters and other personal entertainment options were undermining cinema business. Jeff Blake, vice chairman at Sony says: "The great thing this year is it seemed like audiences found a picture they wanted to see every week, and sometimes two. That didn`t happen last year. Clearly, there were some weekends last year where people would say, `Let`s not go to the movies.` "