SUMMER WITHOUT A BOMB
Hollywood grateful for successes
Have you noticed something oddly tranquil about this summer movie season? For the first time in recent memory, there hasn’t been one major bomb.
Usually by now, there would be blockbuster-sized craters left on the charred summer-movie battlefield, the inevitable toll of Hollywood’s most high-stakes season. But this year, summermovie bomb-watching, long one of the most dependable spectator sports of the season, has gone entirely without the sight of a Lone Ranger-sized mushroom cloud.
After the cataclysmic, sky-is-falling summer of 2017, when overall grosses slid 14.6 per cent from the year before, Hollywood has rebounded. Ticket sales in North America this summer are up 11.3 per cent, comscore reports.
The comeback is even more pronounced when you factor in that the annual Marvel movie kickoff to summer slid just ahead of the official first weekend of May start, shifting the $678.5 million domestic for Disney’s Avenger: Infinity War to the spring.
Amid a remarkably turbulent time for the movie business, this summer has been surprisingly, almost weirdly, steady.
“The studios did what they were supposed to,” said Kyle Davies, domestic distribution chief for Paramount Pictures. “This notion that people are tired of going to the theatres, I don’t believe it for a second. I think people are ready every weekend: ‘Give me a reason to come.’”
Paramount didn’t have many releases over the summer but coming off the spring success of A Quiet Place, Davies said, “Things have turned around.”
Mission: Impossible — Fallout, the sixth instalment in the Tom Cruise franchise, is approaching $500 million worldwide, and the Diane Keaton-jane Fondastarring Book Club has, with $68.6 million, fared better than most comedies this year.
But even Cruise, despite all his powers, can do only so much to tip the overall box office. So what’s behind the rebound?
Subscription services from Moviepass and AMC are both touting their success. But Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations, said it’s difficult to extrapolate how big a driver subscription services have been, though he credited the copious attention and drama around Moviepass with fuelling moviegoing awareness.
He’s more inclined to point to the improved studio project, specifically sequels like Incredibles 2, Ant-man and the Wasp and Deadpool 2.
“The one thing that was very different from last year’s sequels is that people wanted to see these. That’s what it comes down to,” said Bock. “You can say Hollywood’s running on good credit and that’s probably one of the reasons people are coming out weekend after weekend.”
The difference in Pixar releases alone accounts for a yawning $440-million gap. Last summer, the little-loved Cars 3 grossed $152.9 million domestically. This year, Incredibles 2, the summer’s biggest smash, has earned $590.3 million in North America.
The season has had some worrisome blips.
Two of the most dependable forces in movie-going — Star Wars and The Rock — both showed that they ’re mortal. But even those disappointments were measured. Solo, while cause for real concern for Star Wars going forward, still nearly cleared $400 million worldwide. Dwayne Johnson’s Skyscraper, saved by sales in China, managed to gross almost $300 million worldwide.
But the final two weeks of August should only pad the season’s lead. After scoring $5 million in its opening day Wednesday, Warner Bros.’ Crazy Rich Asians — hailed as a watershed moment for Asian-american representation in mainstream moviemaking — appears poised to ride glowing reviews to approximately a fiveday $25-million debut.
After last weekend’s chart-topping The Meg, a shark thriller, Warner Bros. will likely account for the summer’s only two original, non-sequel No. 1 releases.
“It’s content. When you look at last year, there wasn’t much besides Wonder Woman and Dunkirk that really clicked,” said Jeff Goldstein, Warner Bros.’ distribution head. “When we’ve had dips, it’s when the movies haven’t delivered.”
On the indie side, business has been slower, though A24 notched its highest grossing release with Ari Aster’s acclaimed horror film Hereditary ($79.3 million worldwide).
Spike Lee’s recently released Blackkklansman, for Focus Features, has added a jolt to the often sleepy August period, landing the director his best opening weekend in 12 years.
But the most unexpected sensations of the summer have been documentaries. There will be three docs to clear $10 million in box office, an unprecedented high for non-fiction filmmaking. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is up to $21.8 million for Focus, Neon’s Three Identical Strangers has hauled in $9.7 million, and Magnolia’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary RBG has grossed $13.7 million.
“It’s a zeitgeist moment, no doubt,” said David Linde, chief executive of Participant Media, which co-produced RBG. “People go to the theatre for a unique experience and that experience is all about a collective experience. That hasn’t ever been truer.”