I’m aware by now that many people regard me as some kind of ranting loon, a crackpot who believes firmly that, for the movie theatre industry, the sky is falling at alarming speed. But more and more evidence emerges every day to support my wacko theories, and a little Will Ferrell movie is giving me just a smidge more evidence.

You may not remember Semi-Pro–which, frankly, is not surprising. It came out last March and made a cataclysmically dismal thirty-three million dollars at the domestic box office. At current average ticket prices, that means like fifteen hundred people actually saw this movie. Okay, maybe a few more than that, but the point is, Semi-Pro may best be described as “a bona-fide stink bomb audiences can still smell.”

It stinks like failure.

But here’s where the relevant portion kicks in–Semi-Pro is currently the number one video rental in the United States. And the number one SOLD video. AND the number one Blu-ray release!

So by this point, you’re a little astonished. Wait, wait, wait, you’re muttering at your monitor, shaking your heads. Clearly, I just finished telling you that Semi-Pro was a raging failure! And now, suddenly, it’s the king of the marketplace? What happened here??

Easy, says I. People wanted to see Semi-Pro. People wanted to see Will Ferrell Ricky Bobby his way through a movie about basketball. But relatively few people wanted to see it SO BAD that they were willing to incur the mammoth expenses involved in going to see it on the big screen.

It’s a reasonable inference. A very small number of people saw Semi-Pro in theatres–If we assume an average ticket price of ten dollars (not too far out of line considering some showings), that means, domestically, about three million tickets were sold. Out of those three million, you can reasonably assume that one in every hundred was a resale for some putz so desperate to see Will Ferrell Ricky Bobby his way through a movie about basketball that he (or she) bought a second ticket.

So to go from that to number one on ALL THREE major charts means a whole lot more people are seeing Semi-Pro for the first time. A lot of people took the “let’s wait for it to come out on video” stance and bought and rented in droves.

Which is more proof that the theatre is dying on the vine. And to enjoy other athletically-themed movies, try the sports movie trivia on Kwanzoo.

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Categories: Movie stories //