【ハリウッドより愛をこめて】アメリカ経済危機も、映画市場はシリーズ作品で好調!?

来年は面白くなりそうです。それはさておき、興味深いのは同授賞式のプロデュースを手がけるのが、ブレット・ラトナー監督だということであり、奇しくもエディは11月に全米公開されるラトナー監督の最新作『Tower Heist』（原題）に出演しているということ。これって何か関係が…？あなたは来年のハリウッド最大のイベントでエディ・マーフィーの司会ぶりに期待しますか？

（text：Lisle Wilkerson）

（英語原文）

Hi everyone!!! We have now officially entered the fall season here in the US.
All the networks have been advertising their upcoming new shows, as well as promoting the new seasons of fan favorites such as NCIS, GLEE, just to name a few.

But today I am going to talk a bit about this past summer...did you have a favorite film that you went to see this summer? Probably my favorite movie this summer was the summer surprise hit "Bridesmaids".
You would think that with all the bad news about the economy here in the US, that the movie theaters might be suffering as well...? Well, it seems that the current recession has had the EXACT OPPOSITE effect! In fact, this summer was one of the biggest summers of all time as far as movies goes!! Can you believe that?
Box office sales for films were terrible until March, and then all of a sudden things started picking up. And OF COURSE it helped that there were SO many successful sequels that came out this summer as well...such as "Pirates of Caribbean", "Transformers", "Harry Potter", "X-Men", and even "Hangover". These movies helped bring the total box office revenue for the summer up to $4.4 billion !!!! Isn’t that crazy??!!!?
But OF COURSE we mustn’t forget about the huge international audience as well, and according to an article in Variety magazine, the overseas numbers were up 422% to $8.2 billion!! So all things considered, I guess that is a very good sign that people still love going to the movie theater to watch films. It ISN’T just about sitting home and watching a DVD or Blu-Ray..

Now in other movie news, last day it was announced that comedian/actor Eddie Murphy will be hosting the Academy Awards next year!! This is quite a bit surprise to many of us because....well, we haven’t really seen Eddie Murphy in a film that is targeted towards ADULTS in a LONG time!! And there are many people that think that the actor is no longer really "relevant" in Hollywood, therefore he isn’t a good choice. BUT I think he is a great choice for the awards show. After all, the Academy Awards is considered to be one of the hardest shows to host. And after last year’s terrible choice of Anne Hathaway and James Franco (who tried to get along, but just couldn’t get it right)