Got movies? Hoping to stem a three-year decline in moviegoing, the film industry soon may launch ads similar to the ubiquitous milk commercials, the Motion Picture Association of America has announced.
Speaking at the ShoWest convention of theater owners, MPAA chief Dan Glickman said his group is considering an advertising campaign to get “people excited about getting out of their homes to go to the movies.”
Hollywood spends “hundreds of millions of dollars promoting individual movies but very little promoting … movies in general,” he said. “Why not?” As former head of the Department of Agriculture, Glickman said he saw the pork, beef and milk industries improve sales with generic ads.
“Not to suggest that the movies are like pork chops. But those campaigns were done because … individual consumer brands were falling, and this reversed the trend.”
According to new statistics from the movie association, about 1.4 billion tickets were sold in the United States last year, a 9 percent drop from 2004.
At the same time, Hollywood is churning out more movies than ever. Last year, the industry released a record 563 movies, the group said.
Few films struck gold, however. Last year, the average Hollywood movie cost $60 million to make and $36.2 million to market. The films took in an average of $37.3 million.”Our numbers could and should be better,” Glickman said.
– USA Today
