Box office slump

A box office slump is an ongoing occasion in which all major theatrical movies fail to meet expectations at the box office. The longest slump in the North American box office on record started in March 2005 and ended on July 10, 2005.

Causes of a slump
It is often debated of what causes a decrease in year-by-year box office revenues. Growing ticket prices as well as the rise of the home market in recent decades may be a bit of a factor, but it is usually caused by an insufficient amount of rather interesting movies, especially when compared with the year before. Although they happen every now and then, slump years are known to take place right after a certain number of boom years. The most notorious North American box office slumps of modern times took place in 1980 (-2%), 1985 (-7%), 1991 (-4.5%) and 2005 (-6.2%). However, that is only taking into account the year-by-year rise in ticket prices, and the drop in ticket sales are more recurrent than the decline in yearly revenues, although they are most severe during slump years. Examples of declines in ticket sales are found in 1980 (-9%), 1985 (-11.9%), 1986 (-3.7%), 1990 (-5.9%), 1991 (-4%), 1995 (-2.3%, 2000 (-3%) and tickets sales experienced a steady decline starting in 2003 (-3.5%), until a minor recovery took place in 2006 (+ 1.4%).

But nevertheless, a slump year is also known to deliver some of the most successful films of modern times. Films like the Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, Back to the Future, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith lead the North American box office charts of their respective years by significant margins, as well as taking enormous grosses with them.

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