Movie Attendance Dips to 16-Year Low

(The Wall Street Journal) - The Tom Cruise franchise film "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" may have closed out the year with a bang at the box office, but domestic attendance overall dipped to 1.3 billion in 2011, a 16-year low according to Hollywood.com.

In total, Hollywood films grossed a total of $10.2 billion in 2011, according to Hollywood.com. The sum is 3.4 percent less than the $10.6 billion earned at the box office in 2010.

One bright spot at the holiday box office was the fourth installment of the "Mission: Impossible" franchise, which was released by Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures and co-financed by Skydance Productions.

The $145 million film has cumulatively grossed $141.2 million in the US and Canada so far and is Cruise's first significant film to surpass $100 million at the box office since 2006's "Mission: Impossible III."

The film has also grossed $225.3 internationally. In total, Paramount earned $3.2 billion abroad in 2011, the first time any studio has crossed the $3 billion barrier, the studio said.

With the absence of any new wide releases this week, "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows," from Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. Pictures, and "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked," from News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox, also repeated as the weekend's second and third-highest grossing films with respective grosses of $26.5 million and $21 million over the four-day holiday.

News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal and NewsCore.

Rounding out the top five were DreamWorks Pictures' "War Horse," which is being distributed by the Walt Disney Co., and an adaptation of the best-selling novel "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" from Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures.

In limited release, several new titles delivered solid opening numbers. The Weinstein Co.'s "The Iron Lady," a drama starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, earned an impressive $280,409 from four theaters. The film will expand into roughly 500 theaters on Jan. 13, which is both the weekend of the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards and the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, says Weinstein Co. president of distribution Erik Lomis.

Dramas "A Separation," from Sony Corp.'s Sony Pictures Classics, and "Pariah," from Comcast Corp.'s Focus Features, respectively earned $79,481 and $65,000 from three and four theaters.

Read more: The Wall Street Journal