Movie ticket sales jump

Ken Ritter

Wednesday, March 5, 2003 | 11:25 a.m.

More Americans than ever escaped fears of terrorism and talk of war by going to the movies last year, seeing an average of 5.7 films each and paying an average of $5.80 per ticket.

"People want to get away from it all," Motion Picture Association of America president Jack Valenti said Tuesday before delivering an annual address to the ShoWest convention of theater owners meeting in Las Vegas.

Valenti and John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said the 1.6 billion tickets sold nationwide made 2002 the best moviegoing year since 1957. The figure represented a 10.2 percent increase from 2001.

Valenti said the film industry must step up efforts to address a threat from movie pirates who download films off the Internet and swap files.

"If we don't," he said, "we're going to bear witness to the slow undoing of America's greatest treasure."

Valenti in October sent a letter asking 2,300 colleges and universities to voluntarily help curb piracy of movies over broadband university Internet lines.

Downloading a movie on a 56K computer phone line modem might take 15 hours, he said Tuesday, while downloading a movie on broadband lines might take minutes.

Fithian dismissed as "mush" a lawsuit filed in Chicago last month challenging pre-movie advertisements as deceptive because they delay the advertised starting times of films. The suit seeks class-action status and up to $75 per patron as "lost time" damages.

"There is virtually no chance these lawsuits will succeed," he said. Fithian made a distinction between screening television-style ads and movie preview trailers, and urged theater owners to consider audience sentiment.

"If three minutes (of ads) is too much, we should do two," Fithian said. "If five minutes is too much, we should do three."

Valenti touted a night at the movies as the best family entertainment value in the nation. He said a family of four spends an average of about $23 at the movies, but might pay $236 for a Broadway play, $214 at a pro football game or $184 attending a music concert.

He factored the lower cost of tickets at theaters in small towns outside major East Coast and West Coast cities, plus discounts for seniors, students and matinees. He said the average cost per ticket went up 15 cents for the year.

Fithian noted that the number of movie screens went up slightly in 2002 -- from 35,459 to 35,592 -- and the number of theaters decreased from 6,327 to 6,134 by year-end. The number of screens nationwide peaked at 38,000 in 2000.

Valenti said box office receipts for 2002 totaled $9.5 billion, up 13.2 percent from the $8.4 billion he reported a year ago. "The economics of the business are good," he declared.

MPAA companies released 225 films in 2002, or 29 more than the previous year, Valenti said. He counted 242 films from other distributors, or 45 fewer than in 2001.

He put the average combined cost of making and marketing a movie at $89.4 million and said that was $10.7 million more than in 2001.

About 5,700 delegates and guests were attending the ShoWest convention at the Paris Las Vegas and Bally's hotel-casinos. It features seminars and conferences, and ends with a Thursday awards ceremony honoring actors including Adam Sandler, Diane Lane, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Christopher Walken, director Sam Mendes and producer Brian Grazer.