A week before "Murderball's" premiere last weekend, ThinkFilm fielded excited calls from theaters booking the film, asking for more prints of the acclaimed documentary about wheelchair rugby. They needn't have bothered.
Although it was one of the year's best-reviewed films, "Murderball" did half the business the film's distributor originally projected it would, grossing $57,000 in eight theaters. And it's far from an isolated case.
Even though weekend ticket sales finally were up fractionally from a year ago, the summer moviegoing season continued to take its toll, beating down several new films with consistently good reviews.
"Dark Water," a thriller that also carried strong critical backing, came in at fourth place in its opening weekend, taking in $9.9 million. And Steven Spielberg's alien-invasion drama "War of the Worlds," which attracted some of the director's best notices since "Saving Private Ryan" and opened strongly a week ago, fell 53% in its second week of release, grossing $30.5 million.
"We're refusing to believe ["Murderball"] is dead because it's too good," ThinkFilm President Jeff Sackman said. "But no one is really happy here."
The soft returns for "Murderball," "Dark Water" and "War of the Worlds" masked one of the summer's few bright spots: the premiere of "Fantastic Four." The years-in-the-making adaptation of the Marvel comic book grossed $56.1 million in its opening weekend, finishing first among all films, despite lackluster reviews.
The combined $148.9 million in weekend ticket sales generated by all films snapped a 19-week streak of declining revenue compared with a year ago. Still, last weekend's returns were hardly a resounding improvement over the year-ago numbers, which totaled $148.3 million.
The marginally better weekend figures did not reverse the industry's more statistically worrisome trend, which is declining movie admissions, a drift that is largely masked by higher ticket prices. Theater admissions for 2005 are down about 10.4% from a year ago and almost 8% from 2003. Summer admissions are off almost 14% from 2004 and about 9.5% from 2003.
What's also striking about this summer's multiplex news is the way in which the moviegoing malaise appears to be spreading to films considered to be good, rather than just tired remakes, sequels and TV show adaptations. That tendency started with June's "Cinderella Man," which has grossed only $57 million.
