GET READY FOR A SUMMER OF MOVIE BLOCKBUSTERS
It will be, if you dig franchise and superhero movies, like ‘Deadpool 2.’ |
Summer started early this year in Hollywood with the record-breaking release of “Avengers: Infinity War” last month, and the marquee Marvel superheroes couldn’t be coming at a better time.
The box office for the year is down nearly three percent, and the industry is looking to redeem itself after last summer, which, despite hits like “Wonder Woman,” had its worst performance in more than a decade. Although all studios are embracing the year-round blockbuster schedule and massive hits can emerge in any month, like “Black Panther” in February, with work and school vacations, nothing can beat the summer’s potential.
This summer movie-going season, which typically runs from May through Labor Day, could get things back on track. Two of the most profitable franchises have major films on the slate. “Avengers: Infinity War” already has set box office records and Universal Pictures is releasing the sequel to the fifth highest domestic earner of all time, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” on June 22.
And as with every summer, there are more than a handful of sequels and familiar brands coming to theaters. But Wall
Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz whose new book “The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies,” examines the current state of the industry, notes that oversaturation is possible too.
“People do like to see the big franchise tent-pole films,” Fritz said. “But even if the studios make more of them, people are not going to more movies. The more of them there are, the more they are competing for the same box office dollars and as a result you see more flops.”
According to Box Office Mojo, in 2017, movie ticket sales were at a 25-year low, and competition for audience attention is only intensifying. Netflix has a whole slate of summer films too, from the just-released Adam Sandler and Chris Rock comedy “The Week Of” to the WWII-set adaptation of “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.”
“Today, it’s even more important that there is a wide variety of films out there, films that are provocative, that are thrilling, that obviously are entertaining and that you’re presenting them in new and exciting ways,” said Jim Orr, Universal Pictures’ president of domestic theatrical distribution. “We have right now a theater-going audience who is discerning and I think we need to keep that in mind with everything we put forth.”
For instance, Warner Bros., home of Wonder Woman, Batman and the other DC Comics superheroes, doesn’t even have a major DC film on the slate this summer (aside from the animated “Teen Titans GO! To the Movies,” July 27). Instead, its slate boasts films like the star (and female)-driven “Ocean’s 8,” with Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Rihanna and others, comedies like “Tag” (June 15) and “Life of the Party” (May 11), and an adaptation of the popular book “Crazy Rich Asians” (Aug. 17).
Audiences thirsting for more unconventional fare may just have to look a little deeper for the potential hidden gems, like “Uncle Drew” (June 29), a comedy about an aging basketball team competing in a street tournament, with Lil Rel Howery, Kyrie Irving and Shaquille O’Neal, and “Hereditary” (June 8), a trippy horror about the strange things that start happening when a family’s matriarch dies.
Sundance breakouts coming this summer include “Eighth Grade” (July 13) from comedian Bo Burnham, which follows an eighth grade girl around her last week of middle school, “Blind-spotting” (July 20) about a police shooting in Oakland, and “Sorry to Bother You” (July 6) also Oakland-set, but with a quirkier sci-fi edge.
There’s the almost too-strange-to-be-true “The Happy time Murders” (Aug. 17) from Brian Henson and starring Melis- sa McCarthy, where puppets and humans co-exist and a private eye takes on the case of a puppet on puppet murder.
And then there’s “Hotel Artemis,” the directorial debut of “Iron Man 3” screenwriter Drew Pearce. It’s an original actionthriller about a hospital for criminals set in a dystopian, near future Los Angeles with a starstudded cast that Global Road Entertainment is releasing on