Summer box office tracking to miss $4 bln mark
Patrick Stewart to be saluted at 16th San Diego Film Festival
LOS ANGELES, Aug 30, (RTRS): The summer box office is, indeed, in dire shape.
As the movie business heads into the final stretch of summertime, 2017 could be the first year in over a decade that the season’s domestic box office does not earn more than $4 billion, according to projections provided by comScore.
And chances are that mark will be missed by quite a bit. Current projections put the summer (which, on the theatrical calendar starts with the first Friday in May and ends on Labor Day Monday) at $3.78 billion. The last time numbers dipped so low was in 2006 when the summer earned $3.74 billion which, at the time, was a 6% increase from the year prior.
Not so for 2017, which is currently slumping 5.7% behind last year, and 14% behind for the summer. The month of August has been particularly slow. The biggest hits of the month are “Annabelle: Creation”, “The Dark Tower”, and “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”, two of which have yet to make $50 million domestically. Meanwhile, “Suicide Squad” set records for the month of August in 2016, leaving the month this year pacing over 34% behind.
Projections show the summer season slipping even further behind after next week as there are no new major releases — only “Tulip Fever”, a re-release of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, and several indie flicks entering the market in limited release. After Labor Day weekend, the summer is expected to finish 15.7% behind last year’s benchmark.
As sour as domestic ticket sales have been, international and global box office sales are both pacing higher than last year — the year to date through Aug 27 is up 2.8% internationally and 0.2% worldwide. That’s in large part due to China. The Middle Kingdom’s release “Wolf Warrior II” alone has grossed over $800 million, and almost none of that was in North America.
Among the many factors that contribute to such a slow season is an apparent cooling of the public’s interest in studio sequels. Apart from superhero movies “Wonder Woman”, “Spider-Man: Homecoming”, and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” — the latter of which earned more than the original — nearly every franchise film has underperformed. Some, like “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” and “Transformers: The Last Knight”, slumped to new franchise lows. There were also several big-budget whiffs, most notably “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” and “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets” which have both earned about $39 million at the domestic box office, or as much as indie darling “The Big Sick”.
While the domestic summer box office over the past few decades has trended up, there are peaks and troughs year to year. The recordholding summer remains 2013 with over $4.7 billion. The following summer, in 2014, fell off over 14% to just over $4 billion before shooting up 10% in 2015 to $4.5 billion. Still, the industry’s cyclical nature can’t fully explain away the simple fact that business this summer has been undoubtedly abysmal.
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The 16th annual San Diego International Film Festival will screen 117 films and feature a salute to Patrick Stewart, who will be given the Gregory Peck Award for Excellence in Cinema.
The festival will run Oct 4-8. Stewart will be feted Oct 5 at the Variety Night of the Stars Tribute at the Pendry Hotel in Downtown San Diego.
Among the ten films announced in the Narrative Spotlight section of the fest will be four West Coast premieres: “Breathe”, directed by Andy Serkis and starring Andrew Garfield; “The Ballad of Lefty Brown” (director, Jared Moshe and starring Peter Fonda); “Juvenile” (director Bradley Buecker) and “Dog Years” (director Adam Rifkin).
The fest will also host the world premiere of “Dismissed”, directed by Benjamin Arfmann; and the US premiere of “Thelma”, the Norwegian film helmed by Joachim Trier.
There are an additional 18 films in the narrative competition; five spotlight documentaries, with another dozen films in the docu competition; and 72 shorts from around the globe.
Screenings will be held in the newly renovated historic Balboa Theater and Regal Theaters in Downtown San Diego, and ArcLight Cinemas in La Jolla.
The fest is produced by the San Diego Film Foundation. Mantooth is executive and artistic director of the festival.
Earlier this year, Stewart starred as Professor Charles Xavier in the latest X-Men epic “Logan”, reprising a role he originated in the first installment of the franchise in 2000 and earning some of the best reviews of his career.
Tonya