“The Next Incarnation of Distribution”?

Although Paramount Pictures pulled in the largest box-office gross among studios in 2011 — some $1.96 billion in domestic ticket sales, according to the Los Angeles Times — Brad Grey, the studio’s chairman and chief executive, acknowledges the general decline in theater attendance as an industry-wide challenge. Still, Grey disagrees with analysts who blame dwindling box office sales on poor-quality fare. “The issues that keep me up at night about moviegoer attendance and our audience are certainly not lack of appetite for the movies,” Grey tells the LAT. “There’s an audience for everything — it’s going to be about how we make up for lower sales at the box office and with DVDs through digital distribution. I wonder what the next incarnation of distribution is.”