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Hollywood is Suffering Its Worst-attended Summer Movie Season in 25 years (latimes.com)
The number of movie tickets sold in the U.S. this summer (425 million) is likely to be the lowest level since 1992, the L.A. Times reports. "Theaters, studios hit by summer box-office blues." The reason: Too many bad movies, including sequels, reboots and aging franchises that no one wanted to see. Some point to rising ticket prices, which hit a record high in the second quarter. From the report: Then there are long-term challenges, including competition from streaming services such as Netflix and the influence of the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes. How about all of the above? What is clear: This summer was marred with multiple high-profile films that flopped stateside, including "The Mummy," "Baywatch," "The Dark Tower" and "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword." Sequels in the "Alien," "Transformers" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchises also disappointed. The business is also reckoning with broader, longer-term threats that have kept Americans from flocking to theaters the way they used to. People now have more entertainment options than ever, and cinemas have struggled to keep up, despite efforts to adapt with improved technology and services, industry analysts say. The problem is exacerbated by an unforgiving social media environment in which bad movies are immediately punished by online word of mouth.
As long as the international box office makes up the difference, the studios won't care if the American box office slides.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
All of these films made back their budget.
Hollywood likes to whine and, of course, they want to rake in even more money. They can also not admit to making a profit, because then the whole "piracy" narrative becomes very obvious as the complete lie it is. People could notice they are scumbags.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I stopped going to movies because all you see anymore are superhero movies. When's the last time a movie came out in the ballpark of Pulp Fiction, Fight Club, or even Ferris Bueller? I honestly have no idea and I couldn't even tell you the names of two movies in theatres right now.
In addition, therre is this weird trend toward the 90 pound woman who kills every man that gets in her way, and is somehow stronger than the incredible hulk. And the even stranger one of the Wonderwoman movie, which for some reason was promoted as some sort of breakthrough, a never before seen strong capable woman in a movie. What? Aliens, Terminator, and lots of others have had that in the current era. Even then, they missed the boat as feminists were angry because Gal Gadot shaved her armpit hair, which is apparently submission to the patriarchy. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2...
So between endless and now boring reboots, Comic book grade school level, and socially annoying movies, I'll just watch TCM for my cinemafix, than you very much.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
the rest of the world is stupid.
No, Americans are stupid. I don't know if it's distributors or audiences that are to blame, but good films from most other countries don't show in most American cinemas, so other countries can't make films for that market to compete. You probably get a few British films and that's it.
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Not being interested in a movie because it's written to appeal to a foreign culture instead of your own is now racist, huh? Just like everything else. Want immigration laws enforced? Racist. Want to make sure only citizens are voting? Racist. Disagree with affirmative action because it singles people out based on race? Racist. Don't like cheese on your burger? RACIST!
To us "normies" out there, the word is now completely de-fanged and nearly meaningless. The only meaning it has now is to identify its users as people who have no valid argument to put forward and simply want to shout down someone they disagree with. In other words, 95% of the people who use it are idiots.
Hollywood learned their lesson after Avatar, which was only allowed a limited release in China. In China cinemas, it is fine for the lone hero to save the Universe, but it is NOT okay for common people to rise up against oppression. That can bring up too many uncomfortable comparisons to real events.
I know I am out of touch with costs of things... I lived in poverty in the late 90s, the .DOT boom happened and every year has gone up since. So after 17 years of not being in poverty.... I remember a few things.
The poorest people I knew had the best TVs... why? Easy, if you can't make ends meet anyway, why bother trying to budget for everything. Buy it, lease it, rent it, however you need to... just get it and hope you can make the payments.
The word afford is reserved for the middle class. People who make enough to make ends meet. The reason for this is that if you have enough to pay your cost of living (bills, food, car, etc...) and you like the ability to save for bigger things... even if saving really means just paying off your credit cards, you do it. People in the middle class tend to be in the middle class because of the word "afford". I means they can plan their budgets and live up to them. They know how much money they have and what they can spend without stress.
Poor people can't afford anything... hence poor. So if you can't afford anything... ever... you don't bother thinking about it. Instead, you find lay away (which is basically just paying for it before getting it), store credit cards with insane interest rates, pay check loans, etc... anything to get that TV... pay the rent? Uh... well, that's the benefits of the projects, they're used to making concessions for people who can't pay.
So... I would say where you're getting it wrong is believing that having the financial means to buy something has any impact on whether you have it or not.
Visit Florida sometime. You'll see an insanely large market of pawn shops and rent-to-owns, and an endless river of shops designed to exploit the poor by making it possible for them to have big shiny things once in a while. Once you get outside of Disney, Florida is one giant disgusting pit of the poor preying on the poorer.
1st. simpler the plot the better. have distinct bad guy, an inbetween guy and a bunch of good guys. ideally the inbetween guy would jump to good side for some moral dilemma or whatever. if there is a traitor he needs to get his comeuppance. just basic stuff really. the good guy can be some rogue character of sorts. Ideally they're after some magical item that might destroy the world in the wrong hands or whatever.
2nd. explosions are good.
3rd. acrobatics are better.
4th. don't try to explain magic. they'll take it as what it is, magic. it doesn't need to make any sense. just throw that stuff into the plot and don't explain away any of the paradoxes such stuff existing in the world makes for the plot.
5th. sequels to hollywood hits are okay. or just use historical characters. or mix both. plenty of asian hit movies are just retellings of the same tales again and again and again.
6th. don't spend too much time worrying if you can make your effects look good for the thing you are trying to show. as long as it gets the point across then it's enough. they don't care.
7th. have a ghost in the script. don't ask why, just have it.
a good example is the latest pirates and transfomers
I went to see the latest pirates of the caribbean dubbed in thai. it did seemingly not impair AT ALL understanding the movie. the plot is that simple and in addition to the simple to get plot there is just a bunch of action pieces. I would wager I did not miss a single detail about the plot, who was the son/daughter of who, who had an axe to grind for what reason and so forth. it had mediocre cgi. the thais loved it. they don't care about the flaws as long as it is entertaining and has some cool(to them) stuff.
covenant i don't see going down so well - even scott himself doesn't seem to actually have decided just wtf is going with the plot and where it is going. alien resurrection seems to be on reruns all the time on tv.
those bad superhero flicks and sequels? THAT IS EXACTLY CATERING FOR THE CHINESE MARKET!!! the pirates and transformers you're asking why they are still making them and the answer is ASIAN MARKET.
one another note: they even make remakes of soap operas here. the ghost rule applies. and what I mean with a remake is a plot twist by plot twist remake with just an updated cast. instead of having the same bold and the beautiful run for 30 years they can just remake same shorter plot every 4 years. they don't care if there isn't any surprises. I guess it's a cultural thing.
the marvel flicks work great for the because they are not too deeply interconnected and they do have their internal plots, which usually center around something grand like saving a planet or the entire universe. they don't try to force too much character development on the main characters either.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.