Major American studios like Fox are threatening to withhold their movies<\/a> from Canadian theatres \u2014 but now the Globe and Mail<\/a><\/i> reports that Canadians aren\u2019t going to the movies all that much nowadays anyway, at least not compared to Americans:<\/span><\/p>\n Canadian admissions have been edging downward for close to five years. The trend was brought home most recently by Telefilm Canada<\/a>\u2018s release of data for 2006. Overall box office last year was $831-million. While not a dramatic dip from 2005\u2019s $831.3-million, it was enough to register as the fifth consecutive decline since 2002. Indeed, that 2006 total represents a 14.2-per-cent drop from the $968.9-million generated in 2002.<\/p>\n By contrast, box-office numbers in the United States have been moving upward, albeit modestly. According to industry analyst Leonard Klady, ticket receipts there (not<\/i> including Canada) came in at $8.34-billion (U.S.) in 2006, an increase of just over $7-million from the 2003 gross \u2014 and a hike of more than $300-million, or almost 5 per cent, from 2005\u2019s total (which, admittedly, came on the heels of a somewhat dismal year for ticket sales).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This discrepancy doesn\u2019t surprise me. I have been charting Canadian box-office stats<\/a> for the past few years, and colour-coding them red, orange and green based on whether a film\u2019s performance is noticeably better in Canada than it is in the States, about the same, or noticeably worse \u2014 and suffice to say, there is a lot more green in my lists than there is either red or orange. I have also noticed that films that cater to a black or religious market tend to do noticeably better in the States, whereas films that cater to a British or Asian market tend to do better in Canada. So it\u2019s good to see my amateur analysis confirmed by the professionals:<\/p>\n Among the factors both Lichtman and Klady believe do play a major role? Race and ethnicity. In the United States, African-Americans and Hispanic Americans make up close to 30 per cent of the population. Not surprisingly, U.S. studios have often vigorously keyed into that demographic \u2014 which numbers more than 80 million people, a hefty 2 times Canada\u2019s total population \u2014 in green-lighting many pictures. And the results have often proved profitable: 2002\u2019s Barbershop<\/i>, starring Ice Cube and Cedric the Entertainer, grossed more than $75-million in the States, but barely made a blip in Canada.<\/p>\n Klady thinks Canada\u2019s lower (and progressively declining) birth rate has an impact as well. In 2004, the American birth rate was 14 per 1,000 persons while in Canada it was a mere 10.5. A decade earlier it had been roughly 13 here, and 15 in the States. The bottom line: South of the border, there\u2019s a bigger, and faster-growing, supply of potential customers for the line-up at the ticket wicket.<\/p>\n One notable corollary of that stat: While about 30 per cent of Canada\u2019s population is aged 24 and under, in the States the figure is 35 per cent. That adds up to roughly 103 million men and women \u2014 a demographic American studios have courted with one inane Epic Movie<\/a><\/i> after one sophomoric Step Up<\/i> after another. And for 21-year-olds, nothing beats a movie as a relatively cheap \u201cpretext for social interaction\u201d and as a precursor to sex, James Schamus, the head of Focus Features, told The New Yorker<\/i> recently. \u201cYou want to have sex with someone? You say, \u2018Do you want to go to the movies with me Friday night?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Which is not to say there aren\u2019t at least some factors that work in favour of theatres here. Canadians, for instance, respond more positively to British culture than do Americans. \u201cBrit films,\u201d says Lichtman, \u201cgenerally do better here on a per-capita basis than in the U.S.\u201d Canadians are also \u201cmore voracious readers\u201d than their U.S. counterparts, he adds. The result: A film like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King<\/a><\/i> did better here; it was the fifth-highest-grossing film in Canada in 2003-04, whereas in the U.S. it ranked 18th.<\/p>\n But while anglophilia may give a minor boost to the box office here, it\u2019s nothing beside the tidal wave of ticket sales that can ensue when the religious right decides to head to the movies. That may explain why 2005\u2019s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/i>, based on the novel by the very British Clive Staples Lewis, grossed more than $290-million in America, making it that country\u2019s second-most successful commercial release of the year \u2014 while in Canada, Chronicles<\/i> reached only No. 11 by year\u2019s end.<\/p>\n The chief reason, according to Lichtman: Chronicles<\/i> was co-produced by Walden Media<\/a>, which is owned by the Christian Republican Philip Anschutz<\/a>, and he in turn sold the adaptation as \u201ca quasi-religious film\u201d to the American religious right and its leaders \u2014 successfully, as it turned out. It goes without saying that religion in Canada is just not the big organizing principle it is among Americans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n One tiny nit-pick: Step Up<\/a><\/i> may or may not be \u201cinane\u201d \u2014 I wouldn\u2019t know, as I haven\u2019t seen it \u2014 but it actually did slightly better<\/a><\/i> in Canada than in the States, on a per-capita basis.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Major American studios like Fox are threatening to withhold their movies from Canadian theatres \u2014 but now the Globe and Mail reports that Canadians aren\u2019t going to the movies all that much nowadays anyway, at least not compared to Americans: Canadian admissions have been edging downward for close to five years. The trend was brought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n