The Motion PictureAssociation Of America (MPAA) has announced its annual data on the year 2005.

US box office, as widely reported,fell 6% and admissions were down 8.7% to 1.4 billion tickets generating $8.99billion in revenue.

Worldwide box office,however, was down 7.9% to just under $23 billion, reflecting the slump ininternational theatrical performance.

Meanwhile the average costto make and market a studio film fell slightly (0.6%) to $96.2m reflecting a 4%drop in production costs but a 5.2% rise in marketing costs. According to theMPAA, member companies spent more last year on network television and internetadvertising and less on newspaper ads and local TV.

Average marketing costs rosefrom $34.4m per film in 2004 to $36.2m last year; production costs fell from$62.4m to $60m.

Studio blockbusters thrived,according to the MPAA report. Eight films made over $200m in 2005, compared tofive in 2004. Family movies continued to dominate the box office, with PG andPG-13-rated films accounting for 85% of last year's biggest grossing films.

The total number of filmsreleased in the US was 563, an all-time high, up 7% from 528 in 2004.

Average gross for majorstudio releases was $37m in 2005, showing an increase of 7% over the past fiveyears.

Further analysis of thefigures to come in Screendaily and Screen International over the next twoweeks.