Even heroes can’t save summer for Hollywood

Even Wonder Woman may not be able to save the summer for Hollywood.

The acclaimed superhero movie is only the second big hit in an otherwise dismal season for the film industry, which typically counts on May to early September for about 40 per cent of the year’s revenue.

A rash of box-office disappointments, starting with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and continuing through Baywatch, is likely to repeat this weekend, when Universal Pictures’ The Mummylurches into theatres.

Even if the rest of this season’s films perform in line with estimates, summer 2017 is likely to just edge out 2014 — the worst summer for blockbuster films since1976, by some measures, according to Doug Creutz, a Cowen & Co. analyst, in a May 30 note.

The question for the industry is whether this is just a streak of bad luck with some less-than-stellar films, or a more troubling omen.

“What is amazing is that everyone thought, including chief executives, that 2017 was going to be this great year,” Matthew Harrigan, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities Inc., said in an interview.

Now it looks like the first quarter, when box-office sales rose 11 per cent from a year earlier with hits like Beauty and the Beast and The Fate of the Furious, may have been the peak for the year, he said.

Theatre stocks are suffering because of the dismal box-office results.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., the biggest theatre chain in the world, is down 18 per cent over the past month, and Imax Corp., which depends on blockbuster, special-effects-driven films, has dropped 21per cent.