Has the movie business finally caught the bug bedeviling so much of the media business?
Movie theaters have largely been immune to the digital virus until now. Box office revenue has, for the most part, continued to grow, even as changing media consumption habits of younger Internet-raised audiences have crippled the music business and roiled the broadcast television industry.
But it looks like the film industry is exhibiting symptoms of the same disease that brought other media sectors to their knees.
Domestic attendance plunged 5 percent last year, and continues its decline in 2011.
According to one tracking firm, pre-release data measuring audience interest in the days leading up to the release of major films has consistently been down among moviegoers under the age of 25 this year.
Two key metrics, 'intent to see' and 'self-reported,' are down 10 percent since last year and 15 percent since 2009.
With box office revenue off 13 percent through the weekend, some studio executives are quietly pondering a new paradigm in which their market no longer grows. In fact, there is some concern that the looming specter of new media has suddenly reached a tipping point, similar to the fall 2003 TV season, when the broadcast networks experienced an abrupt and very discernable decline in young-male viewers -- a group that has, for the most part, never looked back.
"We had a meeting where we sat down and told everyone to take a deep breath -- we might have to acccept the fact that our year-over-year numbers might not look right again," one pessimistic studio executive told TheWrap.
Movie attendance has slumped before, but North American box office is in the midst of a prolonged decline, steadily dropping 23 percent in ticket sales since peaking at an all-time high of 1.57 billion in 2002, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America (see MPAA chart above).
And a fall-off in movie-going among younger demographics seems to be driving this trend.
Also read: Hollywood Won't Learn, It's a White Summer Again
For instance, males and females age 12-24 bought 32 percent of the movie tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada in 2010, down from 38 percent in 2005, and from 43 percent in 1990, according to data compiled from the MPAA and the International Motion Picture Almanac.
Back in the good old days of 1975, 12-24-year-olds purchased 60 percent of all movie tickets.
According to the MPAA, the average number of movies seen by Americans and Canadians ages 18-24 declined from 8.4 in 2009 to 7.0 in 2010 (see MPAA chart below).
Is the trend accelerating in 2011?
Hard to say, but it doesn't seem to be improving, with even the hits drawing proportionally older audiences.
This past weekend's box-office surprise, raunchy chick comedy "Bridesmaids," commanded an audience that was 63 percent over the age of 30 -- which isn't unprecedented for an R-rated movie.
