Hollywood Loves The World

THe NYT wakes up to a long-term fact: Hollywood makes more money overseas than they do in the US. Why wouldn't they? The US has 300 million people; the rest of the world has some 7 billion. Of course, the NYT makes some flubs. They insist movie attendance has declined in the past decade when in fact it's held within a certain range pretty predictably. More importantly, that ignores the MASSIVE growth in DVD sales which have far outstripped VHS sales and now regularly DOUBLE the annual box office grosses. What would you prefer: an extra $1 billion at the box office or an extra $20 billion of sales on DVD? Finally, I love the bizarre comment from producer Brian Grazer, who insists before casting Ian McKellen and Audrey Tatou in "The Da Vinci Code," he "read articles and reviews [in their countries] to make sure they were 'culturally relevant.'" (And his claim that fans threw themselves on Tom Hanks's car at Cannes is crazy -- it would have been a major breah of security and big news. By the way, a roundup of worldwide grosses for some big movies provides sad news for Superman: it's grossing even less overseas ($150 mil) than here.