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

Posted by msmash on from the what-were-they-thinking dept.

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.

20 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Speaking just for me by geek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I simply can't divorce Hollywood from it's politics. I can't just go and enjoy a movie anymore. They insist on injecting their dogmas on to me. Before the movie I see nothing but politics from the actors, telling me how awful a person I am. During the movie it's an endless barrage of extremism masked as social justice.

    Making things worse, they want me to "enjoy" this in a shitty movie theater surrounded by loud people that can't put their cellphones away. All for the low low price of 15 bucks a person not including the 25 bucks in terrible food.

    Pretty rare these days too that a movie isn't a sequel or prequel or sidequel in some "franchise" that sucked from the start but brought in a lot of teenagers so the stiffs in suits thought it would make sense to throw billions of dollars at it.

    I jokingly said to my wife the other night that there wasn't even anything I wanted to pirate anymore, it's just gotten that bad.

    1. Re:Speaking just for me by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

      I simply can't divorce Hollywood from it's politics. I can't just go and enjoy a movie anymore.

      Translation: "I can't believe Star Wars cast a woman in a leading role and didn't show off her tiddies."

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:Speaking just for me by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No one said you had to watch all the Transformer movies.

    3. Re:Speaking just for me by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      the unrealistically scrawny and weak female lead carrying a black dongstaff riding a speeder that looks like a dildo with the young black buck love interest adventure in their fight against the evil straight white man and being followed around by a small white cuck-bot the white male viewer is supposed to identify as while the hispanic fighter ace saves the day after being commanded to go in by the asian general and the only guy that dies is also a white male. convenient.

      You watched Star Wars and that's what you came away with?

      You might have bigger problems than the SJWs, my friend.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Speaking just for me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You might have bigger problems than the SJWs, my friend.

      Yes, like a lack of titties in movies.

    5. Re:Speaking just for me by mjwx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I simply can't divorce Hollywood from it's politics. I can't just go and enjoy a movie anymore. They insist on injecting their dogmas on to me

      That's your problem, I suggest seeing a therapist about these kinds of paranoid delusions. Your white privilege is as safe as it ever was. Hollywood only has one dogma, that is to make money. The problem Hollywood has is that movies are no longer the only game in town. I'm not just talking about TV and Netflix, video games are now a significant form of entertainment amongst most people. Hollywood for so many decades never had any competition, they were able to keep a stranglehold on the production and distribution of the majority of entertainment, the internet has largely ruined this for them with games and streaming services taking over the production and piracy dealing with the distribution. Hollywood has simply not changed with new technologies. They're still stuck in the 80's when we had no other choice but to buy their crap (and I remember the 80's... they made some shit movies).

      I jokingly said to my wife the other night that there wasn't even anything I wanted to pirate anymore, it's just gotten that bad.

      Could she hear you from the kitchen, or was this when you put her shoes back in the drawer.

      Your problem isn't the imaginary "dogmas", your problem is they aren't pandering to you, ironically its because you're even further behind the times than Hollywood.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    6. Re:Speaking just for me by quantaman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Let's be honest, the only reason of Carry Fisher's success was the bikini scene RofJ, not the depth of the Princess Leia.

      So was Mark Hamill's success a result of his brilliant acting or did he have a shirtless scene I forgot about?

      Let's be honest, Carry Fisher and Mark Hamill were both decent performers who achieved fame beyond their talent because they were well cast in a massively successful movie.

      To insist that Carry Fisher's success was only because of her bikini scene is the definition of sexism.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    7. Re:Speaking just for me by oic0 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When you politicize your content, you alienate half the population no matter which direction you lean. Nothing new there. Hollywood seems to have forgotten this because they think California is the world.

  2. Sequels and remakes by hambone142 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I couldn't believe they did another "Flatliners".

    When we watched the previews a few weeks ago we saw this as well as 4 (yes, FOUR) remakes of previous movies.

    Hollywood deserves to go broke if this is all they can come up with.

    If I see another comic book movie, I'm gonna puke.

  3. Not all movies by HideyoshiJP · · Score: 3, Informative

    Emoji Movie may be all that's wrong with Hollywood, but Baby Driver and Dunkirk are what is right with it.

  4. Re:Nothing new under the sun by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We're just getting way past the saturation point with entertainment and stories of every kind. We need a break, and then afterward we can go back to telling and hearing the same old tales again, just as our ancestors have done for millennia. Maybe we could even do something useful for a while. I have even been thinking about cutting the cord on my Netflix subscription... ...and I'm not any kind of anti-TV nutter.

    When did our ancestors take a "break" from telling stories?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  5. Re:Leftist Agenda or $$$ - Choose One by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't think anyone is staying away from the Emoji movie because of an evil leftist agenda. They're staying away because it sucks, and because streaming services like Netflix and Amazon can provide better entertainment at a lot better price.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  6. but bad movies won't get the blame by arbiter1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hollywood will blame Piracy as reason for weak ticket sales and why we need more tougher law's.

  7. Too Many White Males by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are still too many white males in prominent roles in movies. Movie revenue will increase once all white males are cast in unimportant or comedy relief roles then phased out entirely. Hollywood must boycott white males if they want to succeed.

  8. Well... by Yunzil · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    Pirates of the Caribbean 5
    Production budget: $230,000000
    Worldwide gross: $781,537,470

    Transformers 5
    Production budget: $217,000,000
    Worldwide gross: $586,549,576

    Somebody, somewhere wanted to see them, which is why Hollywood keeps making them.

  9. Re:Leftist Agenda or $$$ - Choose One by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Who invented emojis? Millennials. Who invented millennials? Leftists. Checkmate, Martian.

    I bet you aren't even from Mars.

  10. Hmmm. by Bartles · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    If you raise prices and revenue decreases, it means that prices are too high. There's a simple fix to their problem.

  11. It's China by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  12. "TFA" is basically a fan-made trailer for real TFA by denzacar · · Score: 5, Informative

    Real TFA doesn't even mention emojis OR "more badass female leads and genre-bending horror films".
    All that was injected into discourse by the "writer" of that blogpost masquerading as TFA.

    Cause... clickbait.

    Basically, it boils down to more expensive tickets...
    A summer without a real mega-blockbuster cause all the slots were taken by expensive non-starters or franchises which have overextended their welcome and overpaid for the production...
    And talk about earlier streaming options making distributors nervous. Very nervous.
    Also... Chinese investors. But mostly it's about streaming.

    No agendas.
    Nor is it about genre-bending horrors and chicks who punch people.
    It's about distributors riding their favorite geldings along the road - when a strange mechanical contraption suddenly roared passed them, leaving them and their animals shaken and scared in a cloud of dust and exhaust fumes.
    And then a different machine FLEW over them! GASP!
    Is this the end of the horse industry as we know it?

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
  13. TV Screen Size and Quality by DumbSwede · · Score: 3, Informative

    This seems no surprise to me. Movie experience is essentially a constant. TVs keep getting better and bigger. I find little difference these days watching movies at home. In fact until we've had a 10 foot projection screen in our media room since 2008. I had a tri-beam data-grade projector back in 2000 that I powered with a myHD card. I haven't cared that much about seeing things in the theater since the introduction of Blu-Ray. With shows like Game of Thrones you essentially get a movie fix once a week minimum anyway. Here is the main thing. Learn to delay gratification. Once your watching everything 6 months delayed, your watching the same amount of content and basically the same amount of enjoyment for a lot lower cost point (which helps pay for your kick-ass media room).

    --
    Letter To Iran