The 10th annual DOXA Documentary Film Festival, which ends tonight, is on track to break attendance records.
This is at a time when theatres across North America that show Hollywood films are in decline.
Cineplex Inc. (TSX:CGX) revealed May 12 that attendance in the first three months of 2011 was 14.6% below that of a year ago.
The cinema chain attracted 15.3 million movie-goers in the January through March period compared with 17.9 million people a year ago.
Walt Disney Co. is also suffering. Disney’s shares (NYSE:DIS) slid more than 6% after the company missed analysts’ earnings expectations partly because of problems attracting movie-goers to its films.
However, local theatre-owner Leonard Schein said it would be simplistic to ascribe the decline in attendance to theatre-goers shunning Hollywood films to see quirky documentaries.
“Cineplex attendance is really down because, in the first quarter of 2010, they had Avatar,” said Schein, who owns the Fifth Avenue Cinemas, the Park Theatre and the Ridge Theatre. “Of course, there’s been no movie as big as Avatar since,”
“For us, we had the King’s Speech at the Park. That film was bigger than Avatar was at the Park. The people who wanted to see Avatar mainly saw it at [Cineplex’s] ScotiaBank Theatre.”
Schein said his attendance in the first three months of the year was up more than 4%.
Glen Korstrom
Twitter: @glenkorstrom