Usually in a bad economy like we’ve been experiencing the past couple of years, people turn to the movie theater to get away from it all.
Well, looks like things are so bad that people can’t even do that!
Here’s the story from the AP:
>>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood’s holidays are off to a dreadful start: Fewer people went to the movies the last two weekends than during the box-office hush that followed the Sept. 11 attacks 10 years ago.
Domestic revenues tumbled to a 2011 low of about $77 million this weekend, when the star-filled, holiday-themed romance New Year’s Eve debuted at No. 1 with a weak $13.7 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
It’s the worst weekend in more than three years, since the weekend after Labor Day in 2008, when revenues amounted to $67.6 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. And it comes after an $81 million total a week earlier that had been this year’s previous low.
“It’s unbelievable how bad it is,” said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian.