Why Modern Hollywood Blockbusters Are Doomed

This caption caught my eye in an article in Variety by Patrick Frater, “China Box Office Reaches All-Time Summer Record, With Minimal Help From Hollywood”. The short version is that the Chinese box office, completely unsurprisingly, prefers homegrown movies.

That should serve as a warning for Hollywood. As Stephen Follows documents, the average cost of making a Hollywood “summer blockbuster” has risen sharply over the years. Now it’s $100 million to $200 million. Reportedly, Barbie cost $145 million, Oppenheimer cost $100 million, the latest Indiana Jones installment $300 million, and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning $300 million. Add about the same for distribution and promotion to get an idea of what the picture needs to take in to break even. It should be obvious that these blockbusters can’t depend on domestic earnings alone and, indeed, they typically get about half their box offices from international distribution. But everybody wants their own domestic film industries to dominate their domestic (if not global) box offices.

If you eliminate China and India, the two biggest markets in the world, that imposes a high hurdle for Hollywood movies.

I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen but I don’t think it bodes well for the $1 billion Hollywood blockbuster which you can see looming on the horizon if you squint a little. I would prefer many more lower budget movies tailored for narrower primarily domestic audiences but I don’t believe that will happen. I also note that the coming reality should have some impact on the writers’ and actors’ strike that is presently going on but I doubt that it will.