The movie industry is still feeling the reverberation from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In a new and somewhat unprecedented National Research Group opinion poll, 60 percent of people over 35 still don’t want to go out to the movies, especially males who watch a lot of television news coverage, as reported in Variety.
Despite the polls findings, the major studio distribution and marketing executives, for whom the study was conducted, believe the results are false. They say the box office numbers have been steady since Sept. 11, save perhaps the first weekend after the tragedy, and the total fall grosses are 9 percent ahead of last year. This could also be due in part to higher ticket prices.
Still, films such as Bandits and Riding in Cars with Boys did not do as well as expected and some studio execs are left wonder what Americans want to see at the movies.
“I think people want to go out and see comedies,” one marketing vet told Variety. “They’ll see Ocean’s Eleven. They may not see a heavy drama.”
Entertainment Weekly conducted its own, slightly less scientific, online poll, in which three-quarters of the 21,000 respondents said their tastes in movies and TV had not changed since the attacks. Sixty-three percent thought Hollywood would go right back to making movies and TV shows with the same level of violence as before the attacks.
