The state of summer comedies is definitely no laughing matter
Tag and I Feel Pretty among the year’s box-office duds
In years past, the summertime box office could always be counted on to deliver at least one mainstream comedy smash that would break out of the pack of superhero films, action spectacles and rampaging giant-monster epics.
Think: The Hangover, which pulled in $277 million (all figures U.S.) domestically in 2009. Or Ted, which grossed $219 million in 2012. Or, more recently, last year’s Girls Trip, which took in $115 million.
Alas, earlier this month’s Tag — one of the comedy genre’s brighter hopes for this particular summer — was not it.
Despite boasting an ensemble of name actors (including Ed Helms, Jon Hamm, Hannibal Buress, Jake Johnson, Isla Fisher and Jeremy Renner) and a hooky premise that seemed tailor-made for fans of past comedy hits such as Wed
ding Crashers( grown men playing a decades-long game of tag), the film took in $14.9 million in its debut, less than a tenth of the haul of the weekend’s other major arrival, Pixar’s Incredibles 2.
It also came in lower than the recent openings of Amy Schumer’s I Feel Pretty and Melissa McCarthy’s Life of the Par
ty — both of which have petered out around or below the $50million mark domestically.
At a time when comedy is enjoying a boom on the small screen and standup comedians are touted as “the new rock stars,” the genre can’t seem to shake a big-screen slump.
Barring a surprise breakout, this could be the first summer in more than 20 years in which no traditional comedy grosses more than $100 million at the domestic box office.
Speaking to the Times late last year shortly before release of his bizarro satire Downsizing, director Alexander Payne spoke sadly of what he saw as the twilight of the era of the broadly appealing mainstream summer comedy. “Every summer we used to look forward to the big blockbuster comedy,” Payne said. “We used to look forward to Trading Places and Ghostbusters. ‘What’s the big comedy that’s going to make a ton of money and be delightful?’ I lament the passing of those days.”
“I talk about this all the time with my comedy friends — it is rough out there,” said director Rawson Marshall Thurber, whose Central Intelligence was a summer comedy success just two years ago, grossing $127 million.
Seeing what he calls “a comedy famine at the box office,” Thurber, who also helmed the hits Dodgeball and We’re the Millers, has lately shifted from the genre that launched his career; his next film, which hits theatres July13, is the Die Hardesque action film Skyscraper, starring Dwayne Johnson.
With each passing year, the multiplexes have become increasingly dominated by bigbudget spectacles, many of which have eaten into the turf of the traditional comedy. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle gave Johnson his biggest domestic hit by pairing him with comedy veterans Kevin Hart and Jack Black and a healthy dose of tent-pole razzle-dazzle. Marvel Studios juggernauts such as Guardians of the Galaxy and Thor: Ragnarok deliver as many jokes as action set pieces, while, for all their comic-book trappings, Deadpool and its sequel were essentially R-rated action-comedies dressed in spandex.
Deadpool screenwriters Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese scored their breakout with 2009 comedy sleeper Zombieland but have since found even more success giving the superhero genre a sarcastic makeover with their fellow writer and franchise star Ryan Reynolds.
“I think it’s less that audiences don’t want to see comedy in a theatre and more that they do want to see spectacle in the theatre,” Reese said. “TV is so good at providing drama and comedy that the movie theatre is becoming one of the only places you can see things on a grand stage. It may be that with Deadpool we’re just taking advantage of that. We’re providing spectacle and the superhero genre, but then we’re sliding a comedy in, so I think we get the benefit of both genres as opposed to just one.”
“Do people go to the theatre to see just a pure comedy anymore?” Wernick wondered. “Boy, I don’t know. It’s truly a shame because I think comedies are such a communal experience. Going to the theatre and hearing other people laugh is such a wonderful feeling of community. So we hope by all means that it’s not the end of the traditional comedy because we grew up on that stuff and love it to death.”
Although her film fared better than most, Blockers director Kay Cannon can’t shake the feeling that big-screen comedy is in the doldrums both creatively and commercially. “You have to choose to be optimistic — otherwise it’s just too sad,” Cannon said. “I think it really comes down to the work. We have to be more advanced and more sophisticated in the stories and the kind of comedy that we’re putting out. There’s so much content out there that you have to touch people in some way.
“It’s just harder to make comedies good because audiences are so savvy and they’ve seen a lot,” Cannon continued. “You can have a horror movie that’s just OK and people will go see it because scaring someone is easier than making them laugh. A comedy has to be great.”
Indeed, it’s no coincidence that the decline in the fortunes of comedy on the big screen has moved in lockstep with the rise in the quality and quantity of comedy on the small screen. Services such as Netflix and Hulu offer viewers a seemingly limitless supply of comedy series, films and standup specials on which they can binge without leaving their couch.
As a result, comedy stars have increasingly followed the audience toward TV and streaming platforms, where the creative liberties may be greater and the pressures to deliver a huge audience lower. Last week, Will Ferrell signed a deal with Netflix to star in an upcoming comedy for the service called Eurovision.
Still, not everyone in the film-comedy business shares the sense that the genre’s best days are behind it. One of that realm’s most powerful figures, Judd Apatow, takes a more sanguine view. For Apatow, whose comedy hits include The 40Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Trainwreck, it all comes down to execution and quality control.
“When comedy is good, it always does well,” Apatow told the Times recently. “There’s no great comedy that hasn’t made money — I think it’s as simple as that.”
As examples, he pointed to Greta Gerwig’s coming-of-age film Lady Bird, which earned a best picture Oscar nod and grossed nearly $77 million worldwide, and last summer’s low-budget romantic comedy The Big Sick, which earned widespread raves and grossed $56 million globally.
“Right now I think we’re in this dip in the comedy market where a new voice has to come along in the same way that Judd Apatow came along and the Farrelly brothers before him and Adam Sandler before that,” Thurber said. “It’s certainly not going to be me, but there will be someone who will come along who will be young and fresh and new and have a new tone of comedy.
“Right now the horizon looks really dry because they haven’t shown up yet,” Thurber continued. “But that voice will come back in and you’ll go, ‘Oh, comedy is this now.’ You can set your watch by it.”