Oh Look, Hollywood Had Yet Another Record Year At The Box Office

[Mike]

It seems that we report something like this each and every year, but once again, it looks like Hollywood has set a record at the box office, even as it continues to whine pitifully about how "piracy" is destroying its business.

The trick apparently -- and I know, this is crazy -- is to Make Good Movies. Shocking, I know.

"Going down the list of studios, they all had great movies that kept people coming back to the theaters all year long," said Nikki Rocco, president of distribution at Universal

What a concept.

Of course, some will argue that the box office is only a part of the industry's revenue -- and that's absolutely true. Of course, to argue about declines in home video revenue is pretty disingenuous since the industry fought incredibly hard to block that revenue stream from ever existing. Besides, as with the box office, we're seeing that when studios (gasp!) produce good content and make it easy and convenient to watch at home for a reasonable price and without painful restrictions, audiences seem to jump on board.

It's almost as if... the problem has never been "piracy" but the fact that the studios have spent years resisting providing consumers with good alternatives...



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[Hawk]

I wonder what life would be like if they just stopped making DVDs or allowed movies to be played on TV and the internet. And the only way you could watch it would be at a theater. I wonder if the box offices and movie theaters would explode, or if movie companies would lose tons of money from the loss of dvd sales.

But on this topic. While its nice to own the DVD, its hardly worth it. Even if I had all my movies in DVD form, Id still prefer to have them all at my fingertips (i.e. computer) for easy viewing. So as far as movie companies are concerned, Im not costing them any money as I wouldn't buy their DVDs anyway.