PUSS’S BOOTS NOT LIKELY TO KICK DWA’S PROFITS

While some investors may have concluded that DreamWorks Animation dodged a bullet after its current release Puss in Boots opened below expectations but saw a minuscule drop in its second week and a small one in its third, at least one leading media analyst thinks that this cat has run out of lives. Richard Greenfield of BTIG Research notes that while 3D surcharges have boosted the film at the box office, the number of people actually going out to see it may turn out to be a historical low for the studio. Currently attendance is 25 percent lower than what Bee Movie was at the same point in its run — and Bee Movie was considered a flop. It’s 40 percent below 2004’s Shark Tale. And while it has had the family-film audience to itself over the past three weeks, it will begin to face some serious competition as a raft of family films hits the megaplexes in advance of the holidays, beginning on Friday with Warner Bros.’ Happy Feet 2. Greenfield says that he expects Puss in Boots to perform below his $157-million estimate, probably coming in at around $140 million. But with attendance down, the clamor for a DVD/Blu-ray Disk of the movie is likely to be stifled. “We believe DVD sales for Puss and Boots will be quite challenged in 2012,” Greenfield concludes.