What’s Behind the Dismal Winter at the US Box Office

5:00 AM PST 3/6/2013 by Pamela McClintock – THR

Theater stocks slide and grosses drop 15 percent as “Jack the Giant Slayer” leads a
season of discontent and a glut of grim action flops leaves few studios unscathed.

When Bryan Singer sat down at his computer in mid-January and read Internet
comments criticizing a new Warner Bros. poster for his big-budget epic Jack the
Giant Slayer, he fumed. He didn’t care for the cartoonish image of the film’s stars
brandishing swords and standing around a swirling beanstalk. So Singer complained
on Twitter. “Sorry for these crappy airbrushed images,” he wrote Jan. 16, irking
Warners’ powerful marketing head Sue Kroll. “They do the film no justice. I’m proud
of the film & our great test scores.” An insider confesses, “Bryan felt like he had to
apologize to his fans.”

The dust-up points to a long and fraught process culminating with the low $27.2
million North American debut of Jack the Giant Slayer during the March 1-to-3
weekend, the latest in a string of dismal 2013 domestic releases. Revenue and
attendance both are down a steep 15 percent from the same period in 2012, wiping
away gains made last year. Jack might have cost far more than any of the other
misses, but in assessing the carnage, there’s a collective sense that Hollywood is
misjudging the moviegoing audience and piling too many of the same types of movies
on top of one another. Continue reading What’s Behind the Dismal Winter at the US Box Office →