A high tide raises all ships. Coming from a New York indie background, I hope every movie at Sundance sells and every year sets new records for acquisitions, because it makes financing small movies seem like a better idea. Then I root for those movies to do well, because it makes acquiring those movies seem like a better idea.

My big takeaway from this: Paul Blart, Mall Cop came out three years ago??? THREE YEARS!?!? Who has time to screw around these days? By god, time really IS speeding up!

Also, I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree with wanting all movies to succeed. I might have agreed ten years ago, or even five, but with some of the absolute, slave-to-formula, market-the-hell-out-of-it, open-big-then-who-cares-what-happens-next drivel that has been produced lately, I feel I've been personally taken too many times. Not just money I won't get back, but hours of my life. (Hello, CLASH OF THE TITANS! Yeah, I'm still simmering!) So, I like it that people have caught on to the big studios' game plans. Falling box office revenue is the only thing that will prompt a badly needed rethinking of the business model and get the bean counters out of the script and back to their counting houses. It's no accident that, in the same year when revenues dipped so badly, movies like BLACK SWAN and TRUE GRIT did so well. (Heck -- I didn't even like BLACK SWAN, but that's the kind of movie I want to do well, regardless of how I personally feel about it. So much of the other stuff needs to go down in flames in order to prompt a change. If people keep buying garbage, other people will keep churning out garbage and film has too much potential to drown in the cultural backwater it's rapidly slipping into.)

Good writeup. I responded in length in my blog. The reality is that unimaginative marketing and product has driven people out of the theaters. It's boom or bust in Hollywood right now, and even those in Hollywood would tell you that it isn't the ideal scenario. So there is an endemic problem. A modest gain over previous years isn't going to help anyone. A change in how theaters are thought of is the only chance. Cheers, Schmüdde www.schmudde.net www.directingfilm.net

Let me frame this a bit more clearly: I was responding from the perspective of working screenwriters in Hollywood who are actively engaged in writing and selling content, OWAs, pitching and all the rest. In a more macro sense in terms of the overall state of the movie business, I concur that shitty movies do nobody any good. I think I've posted enough items of that ilk over time, especially pushing for indie films and adult dramas, and making fun of "Slinky: The Movie" to have established my street cred on this front. So combining micro (screenwriters working in Hwood in the here and now) and macro (the overall state of the movie business), let's wish for the best where the studios do healthy business but also produce and/or distribute a wide variety of content including an embrace of original, fresh, and different movies.

Last year while interning at a prod co, I was listening in on a phone call between execs -- and one laughed when he mentioned how poorly Mars Needs Moms was tracking.