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Everyone's Going to the Movies Again

by Evan Shamoon on March 2, 2009 at 06:29 PM



You know that legend about how, when the economy is bad, people still want to escape to the movies by spending $11 for a ticket and $5 for a bucket of popcorn? Well, it's holding true right now.

According to analysts with the company Media by Numbers, movie ticket sales are up 17.5-percent this year to $1.7 billion, while attendance has leaped by almost 16-percent. The New York Times notes that, if this pace continues throughout the rest of the year, it would represent the single biggest surge in US movie-going in at least 20 years.

"It's not rocket science," said Martin Kaplan, the director of the Norman Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment and Society at the University of Southern California (how's that for a title?), to the New York Times. "People want to forget their troubles, and they want to be with other people."

Guess that sort of depends on the person. We're heartily enjoying Netflix Watch Instantly, ourselves. [From: The New York Times Via: WalletPop]

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Tags: economy, film, financial crisis, FinancialCrisis, hollywood, movies, recession, trends

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