Box Office Ain't Bad, and That's Good

In 2005, the box-office sky was falling. In 2006, the business was all rainbows and bunny rabbits and Johnny Depp.

Or was it?

For the third straight year, the number of warm bodies sitting in air-cooled theaters fell, leaving movie attendance at its lowest level in nearly 10 years, according to estimates released Tuesday by Exhibitor Relations.

Still, with memories of 2005's much maligned box-office performance still fresh, analysts were apt to look on the bright side. Or, at least, the bright-ish side.

"If 2006 is deigned successful, it's because the bleeding stopped," Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray said Tuesday.

True enough. While attendance slipped by 15.2 million moviegoers in 2006, it plunged by 131 million in 2005.

Even better for those residing in Hollywood executive suites, Exhibitor Relations' Jeff Bock advised that the final stats could end up showing 2006's attendance even with or a touch better than 2005's.

Money-wise, ticket revenue was slightly up, from $8.996 billion in 2005 to $9 billion in 2006, according to Exhibitor Relations.

The Depp-led Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest topped all movies with a haul of some $423 million. The sequel was so monstrous it almost made as much loot as the next two top-grossing movies (Cars, $244.1 million; X-Men: The Last Stand, $234.4 million) combined.

Overall, franchise flicks such as Dead Man's Chest dominated along with anthropomorphic CGI comedies such as Cars; Ice Age: The Meltdown ($195.3 million) hit the jackpot as a CGI sequel.

With even more franchise flicks on the way (see: Spider-Man 3, Shrek 3, the latest Harry Potter, etc.), Bock said he thinks 2007 could be the year Hollywood turns around its attendance slump.

"We've never seen a summer like this," Bock said of 2007's scheduled slate. "It's like the circus is going to town."

Taking a last look back at 2006, Gray said the year answered a big question raised by the troubles of 2005: Namely, do movies still matter?

"[The 2006 numbers] showed that with pictures like Pirates or even Night at the Museum, if you build it they will come," Gray said. "It's not all about DVDs and downloads."

Other notable box-office numbers from 2006, according to stats from Exhibitor Relations and Box Office Mojo (boxofficemojo.com):

• 598 movies grossed at least $30; 226 grossed at least $1 million; 17 movies grossed at least $100 million; 5 movies grossed at least $200 million; and only one movie, Dead Man's Chest, grossed at least $300 million. Or $400 million.
• Did Tom Cruise's box-office prowess deserve the scorn of Sumner Redstone and others? "Probably not," Gray said. "That was a bit overrated." Indeed, Cruise's Mission: Impossible 3 made $133.5 million, and doubled its pleasure overseas with another $263.6 million. In defense of Redstone, M:I-3 grossed nearly $150 million less worldwide than M:I-2.
• Borat ($125.9 million) and Little Miss Sunshine ($59.4 million) were cost-effective hits; the $160-million Poseidon ($60.7 million) and the $135-million Miami Vice ($63.5 million) were not.
• The Departed ($120 million) was director Martin Scorsese's biggest hit.
• Inside Man ($88.5 million) was director Spike Lee's biggest hit.  
• Lady in the Water ($42.3 million) was director M. Night Shyamalan's biggest wide-release bomb.
• Other stars having down years: Harrison Ford, who hit the wall in Firewall ($48.8 million); Sean Penn, who failed to ignite the populace with All the King's Men ($7.2 million); and Sharon Stone, who crossed her legs without incident in Basic Instinct 2 ($5.9 million).
• Top-paid actress Nicole Kidman had better luck as a penguin in Happy Feet ($176.2 million) than as photographer Diane Arbus in Fur ($223,202).
• Funny Will Ferrell was a big hit in Talladega Nights ($148.2 million). More serious Will Ferrell was no slouch in Stranger Than Fiction ($40.4 million).
• The Nativity Story ($37.4 million) was no Passion of the Christ.
• Mel Gibson's Apocalypto ($43.8 million) was no Passion of the Christ, either, but it was Hollywood's all-time highest-grossing movie, Mayan-language division.
• Rocky Balboa ($51.1 million) was the first Sylvester Stallone-toplined film to top $50 million in more than a decade.
• Just My Luck ($17.3 million) was the first Lindsay Lohan-toplined film to fail to top even $25 million.
• Ben Stiller's Night at the Museum ($127.3 million) made the ranks of the year's top 20 on the strength of just two weekends—two big weekends.
• The Santa Clause 3 ($83.7 million) showed there was some love left for the holiday comedy, provided the film wasn't titled Deck the Halls ($34.5 million).
• Feel-good 9/11 (World Trade Center, $70.3 million) topped feel-bad 9/11 (United 93, $31.5 million).
• Box-office receipts are not prerequisites for awards-show nominations, as Golden Globe hopefuls Forest Whitaker (up for The Last King of Scotland, $3.6 million), Clint Eastwood (up for, in part, Letters from Iwo Jima, $343,000) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (up for Sherrybaby, $199,176) proved.
• You can release a movie in multiple formats, but you can't necessarily draw a crowd for any one of them, as Steven Soderbergh's Bubble ($145,626) proved.

Here's a rundown of the top-grossing movies of 2006, per estimates from Exhibitor Relations:

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, $423 million
2. Cars, $244.1 million
3. X-Men: The Last Stand, $234.4 million
4. The Da Vinci Code, $217.5 million
5. Superman Returns, $200 million
6. Ice Age: The Meltdown, $195.3 million
7. Happy Feet, $176.2 million
8. Over the Hedge, $155 million
9. Casino Royale, $153.4 million
10. Talladega Nights, $148.2 million