Just a few weeks ago, Bloomberg's Anousha Sakoui wrote an alerting piece on Hollywood’s disappointing summer at the Box-Office. Sakoui opened the piece by stating "more than a month into the summer movie season, one thing has become clear: Many of Hollywood’s sequels, reboots and reimaginings are falling flat."
Citing “Dark Phoenix” “The Secret Life of Pets 2” “Rocketman" and “Godzilla,” Sakoui hinted at the fact that maybe, just maybe, moviegoers were getting pickier, mostly due to Hollywood studios having "force-fed" them junk all these years.
As if Hollywood’s summer box-office numbers couldn’t get any worse, more than two months into the season, we’ve had to add a few more casualties: “MIB: International,” “Shaft.” "Annabelle Comes Home,” “Child’a Play,” and even “Toy Story 4.” All of the titles mentioned have performed way below tracker expectations and have inched the industry closer to total and utter panic mode.
Now comes today’s news [via THR] that box-office revenue is down a scathing 10% from just a year ago at this time. Industry analyst Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore worryingly states that “for every two steps forward, we are going three steps back.”
Maybe, you would think, this downward interest from moviegoers could actually have something to do with the quality of the movies being released? It’s no secret that 2019 has not been a good year for quality studio filmmaking, but, also, where’s the original content? Original hits are nearly extinct. If you take a look at the top 20 highest grossing movies, so far, of the year only one movie is not a sequel, remake and/or reboot and that’s Jordan Peele’s “Us.” The other 19 titles are part of the re-branding culture that has completely taken over Hollywood the last decade.
Of note; Four of the top-grossing 2019 movies belong to Disney “Avengers: Endgame” ($841.3 million), “Captain Marvel” ($426.8 million), “Aladdin” ($305.9 million) and “Toy Story 4” ($236.9 million). I’ve been sending out warnings these past few years of a total Hollywood monopolization courtesy of Disney, it could very well be coming sooner than expected.