The Libertas film blog notes a key number left out of the recent figures on Hollywood's box office trends:

The seeming important news was that the domestic marketplace (ie. the U.S. and Canada) generated $9.63 billion in sales of movie tickets during 2007.

If it wasn’t already the case, we might ooh about the unprecedented amount of money spent at multiplexes assuming audiences maintained a healthy appetite at the concession stand. The MPAA believes (along with the National Association of Theater Owners) the figure translates to a non-record of roughly 1.4 billion admissions – about 0.3% more than the prior year and 200 million fewer folk than attended back in 2002.

While DIY video distributed via the 'Net will become an increasingly competitive factor in the next few years, movies are one of the few remaining entertainment fields where big money and lots of people are needed for a superior product. But Hollywood seems to have forgotten this: instead of cranking out apolitical entertainment for the masses, Hollywood movies have become increasingly insular and reactionary since 9/11. To the point where a mass audience is optional, as Mark Steyn wrote a few years ago:

That’s why Hollywood prefers to make “controversial” films about controversies that are settled, rousing itself to fight battles long won. Go back to USA Today’s approving list of Hollywood’s willingness to “broach the tough issues”: “Brokeback and Capote for their portrayal of gay characters; Crash for its examination of racial tension . . .” That might have been “bold” “courageous” movie-making half-a-century ago. Ever seen the Dirk Bogarde film Victim? He plays a respectable married barrister whose latest case threatens to expose his homosexuality. That was 1961, when homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom and Bogarde was the British movie industry’s matinee idol and every schoolgirl’s pinup: That’s brave. Doing it at a time when your typical conservative politician gets denounced as “homophobic” because he’s only in favor of civil unions is just an exercise in moral self-congratulation. And, unlike the media, most of the American people are savvy enough to conclude that by definition that doesn’t require their participation.