There’s an interesting article at Hollywood Reporter on this summer’s flabby domestic box office, the lowest in more than ten years:
By the time Labor Day weekend wraps, summer box-office revenue in North America will end up being down nearly 16 percent over last year, the steepest decline in modern times and eclipsing the 14.6 percent dip in 2014. It will also be the first time since 2006 that summer didn’t clear $4 billion.
That’s according to comScore, which is predicting that revenue will end up at roughly $3.78 billion (a 15.7 percent decline). Attendance also plummeted, and is almost assured of hitting a 25-year low in terms of the number of tickets sold, according to Box Office Mojo.
Some of the pictures that floundered have done well overseas and, apparently, that is where the future of Hollywood blockbusters will be.
How do you explain the poor domestic box office this summer?
- I haven’t gone out to see a movie in years.
- I just don’t have that much interest in comic book superhero movies.
- I just don’t have that much interest in the umpteenth sequel to a movie that wasn’t that great to begin with.
- Hollywood is sacrificing the domestic audience to gain international box office. Their plan is working.
- American movie-goers are tired of the heavy-handed messages that Hollywood is trying to peddle.
- Americans are reacting to a too-political Hollywood by punishing it at the box office.
- I was too busy bailing/looking for a job/trying to find my keys/other.
Just for the record I think that political explanations are a very minor source of Hollywood’s problems. IMO car chases and explosions eventually get old. When you sacrifice all other values to the action necessary to secure an international audience, movies start getting pretty tired quickly.
I actually wish that Hollywood would adopt the Bollywood formula: pretty girls, pretty boys, singing and dancing, low comedy, some action, if you want to send a message use Western Union. I think they’d be amazed at how many people would spring to see those movies here in the U. S. just as they do everywhere else in the world.
Most of the good movies I have seen in the last few years have been art films and indy B- and horror. Films like Raw, Free Fire, The Witch, Blair Witch 2, The Invitation, and High-Rise. I’ve tried watching some of the superhero summer things but they are so tedious and dead. A couple months ago I saw the beginning of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That scene with the air-traffic control has always been spellbinding to me. It is shot in one room, and shows only instruments and reactions. Now every blank would be filled in and the scene would have none of the power and suspense. Filling every blank in is what Hollywood does.
In the same vein I’ve tried Game of Thrones and really can’t handle that. However, the new Twin Peaks has been a miracle. Lynch has actually put together a compelling story out of long takes and strange scenes that are all essential. Same principle.
I think the last movie I went to see was Star Wars Episode VII at an IMAX, before that it was probably the first Hobbit movie (bleh). At this point, I only tend to see films that hold the promise of something better than what I can see on my home system, but its not that I really want to see that many of those types of films. I don’t think my kids go to the movie theatre as often as I did at their age, there always seems to be something else competing for their interest.
Another possibility is that TV has been watchable, e.g. the first season of True Detective, Teletubbies, Luther and so on. Then in order will go with G (25 miles is bit to drive to just see a movie unless She says so), D and C.
Going to movies is an expensive hassle unless it’s for something that promises to be really worth it on a big screen. Those movies are rare.
When I was in high school and college I went to movies all the time. They were cheap and it helped that my college roommate was the film reviewer for university newspaper. A lot of movies I walked out on, but part of the fun was seeing new things.
Today I can get that thanks to the internet. The only time we go to a movie theater anymore is when it’s something that’s must see for the kids – Marvel, Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc.
I also think it’s obvious that Hollywood is globalizing and moving toward the international market. You see it a lot with China especially – the casting of famous Chinese actors in bit roles in major US movies as well as moves to make content palatable to Chinese censors.