Hollywood's Bad Summer Movies Are Driving a Decline in Movie Ticket Sales (fastcompany.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: While some people may point at The Emoji Movie as the root of all that is wrong with Hollywood, The Wall Street Journal reports that the problem goes much deeper than a single misfire featuring Patrick Stewart as a poop emoji. WSJ reports that movie attendance has dropped by 5%, compared with the same period in 2016, and revenues are down, too, dipping just 2.9%, thanks to higher ticket prices making up for the lack of ticket sales. On Aug. 2, AMC shares dropped 27% in one day, the WSJ reports. While films like Beauty and the Beast, Wonder Woman, and Get Out fared well at the box office, they were the anomalies in a year full of box office disappointments. Instead of giving moviegoers more badass female leads and genre-bending horror films, Hollywood keeps throwing gobs of money at an unwanted fifth installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, more Transformers movies, and putting $175 million into King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and then clutching their pearls in shock that no one wanted to see them.

Comments

No originality ....

[King_TJ]

The heavy left-wing political slant most Hollywood stars and writers want to impart on films isn't helping sales either. But IMO, the lack of movies worth the price of admission to see is the biggest issue.

I actually enjoy going to the theater to see a movie sometimes. I'm not much of a sports person so I don't go to see games. A good movie is an excuse to get out of the house with the family and to buy bragging rights that we saw a newly released film long before it comes out on video. All the complaints about unruly crowds and teens using their phones through entire movies? I've encountered a bit of that, but it's more the exception than the rule - at least at the theaters I go to.

But the movie has to be worth seeing! With so many sequels and remakes, there's not a whole lot left! Anything in one of those categories is best rented and watched at home, IMO. Some of the remakes are mildly amusing or entertaining, but practically never rise to the level of justifying buying a group of adult movie tickets at over $11 each, plus popcorn or sodas or what-not at hugely inflated theater prices.

I think the superhero movies from Marvel and DC have done so well because there were so many good stories to tell there. We have many decades of comic books being printed that were all but ignored on the big screen until now. Even so? You've still got Hollywood trying to milk some of the best known ones (Spiderman, Batman and Superman) with regular re-releases of films about them, sometimes rehashing the same basic story different ways. It feels like the producers and directors are making these more for themselves than for the audience?

But sometimes you've just had enough of seeing yet another superhero movie, too. Then what? The Fast and the Furious movies started out as ideal summer action/fantasy films - but by this last one? It just went over the top on stretching your belief. "I'll just push this torpedo that's flying here and change its direction." Come on! A good car movie needs to have scenes that at least make some attempt at being plausible.

And some will disagree, but I feel like the "horror movie" genre was all played out by some time in the 1990's, if not earlier. 90% of them are pretty much formula material, aimed at an audience young enough to not have watched a lot of the older stuff first. Nobody else would find much of it worthwhile at all. And again, any of the true classics they came up with got rehashed with SO many sequels it became a farce. (Anyone up for another Chucky movie? Or hey, maybe we could redo the Exorcist one more time?)

Personally, I'm into sci-fi more than most genres, and Hollywood manages to do a decent job with that occasionally. But not often. And worse yet? When they promise a lot but get it all wrong, they alienate people who you managed to drag along who weren't really into sci-fi but resigned to give it a chance. How many times will they try again when future sci-fi movies come out?

I was just telling a friend of mine earlier today ..... as much as we all loved "Office Space", I think I'm glad they didn't try to do a sequel. I mean, it's another obvious cash grab for Hollywood if they did. But it would probably be awful. I think you could do it right, at least for one more movie. But you'd need to tell a whole new story about a different company, with a whole new cast of interesting characters. And for comic relief, re-insert a couple of the originals. Maybe Lumbergh finds a new job as a middle manager at the new company, since crappy middle managers always seem to manage to keep getting re-hired at places in real life. I think instead, they'd screw it all up trying to tell some stupid story about how all the characters find themselves doing the same kind of work at a new place.

It's China

[rsilvergun]

ticket sales are down in the US because the movies are geared to the Chinese market. They're less desirable (weaker dialog so it's easier to dub, watered down plots to make it through Chinese censors) but folks still go see them, they just don't keep going again and again. Profits in the States are down but that's dwarfed by the profits in the US.

Re:Leftist Agenda or $$$ - Choose One

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Funny, I didn't realize a 45-year old Japanese engineer working for NTT DoCoMo is considered a millennial...