Why then does the theatrical release calendar resemble a graveyard after Bullet Train hits movie houses on August 6? From August 13 to October 14 (when Halloween Ends debuts), there’s absolutely no surefire hit slated for theatrical release. And the near future looks bright, with the recent launch of Thor: Love and Thunderexceeding all previous Thor movies (even Ragnarok, which benefited from pre- Infinity War buzz and had popular characters like Loki and Hulk in it) and the 1-2-3 punch of Jordan Peele’s sci-fi horror Nope, the animated DC League of Super-Pets, and the Brad Pitt action-thriller Bullet Train all due for release in rapid succession. Mix in indie hits like Everything Everywhere All at Once (really a spring release, but like Maverick, it keeps going and going at the box office), animated fare like The Rise of Gru, adult dramas like Elvis, and genre films like The Black Phone and you have a healthy season of moviegoing. It’s now 2022’s highest-grossing movie at $1.1 billion dollars, and that’s without key markets like China or Russia. With no superheroes, dinosaurs, or minions in sight, this film, delayed two years due to star Tom Cruise’s insistence that the theatrical experience is, er, paramount, debuted above expectations and kept on drawing in audiences of all ages. Perhaps the most surprising hit of the summer (if not the entire year) is a sequel to a 36-year-old movie, Top Gun: Maverick. Dominion is now at $800 million, a number virtually unthinkable just a year ago. Another franchise tentpole, Jurassic Park Dominion, weathered terrible reviews and nearly matched its predecessor, the equally critically reviled Fallen Kingdom. Not bad for a film about trauma and ennui disguised as a superhero movie. While more divisive than the usual MCU flick, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madnessreaped huge grosses in its opening weekend, ultimately topping out at just over $950 million worldwide. The good times continued into the summer, which officially started with (what else?) a Marvel movie. With a solid spring of hits ( Scream, Jackass Forever, The Batman, Uncharted, Sonic 2, The Lost City), Hollywood was on its way to pre-pandemic levels of business, and that’s thanks to movie theaters being open and having appealing pictures to satiate hungry audiences. It helped that Sony didn’t have an in-house streaming service to send it to, which allowed the movie to play well into 2022, becoming the third highest-grossing movie of all time, and was the clarion call for audiences and the industry that movie theaters were back. It was Spidey who brought in a wide variety of people and made a movie theater, rather than a streaming service, the place to see a movie. The holiday season was really the first time theatrical resembled pre-pandemic times, with a multitude of hits ( Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Encanto, Sing 2) and one genuine blockbuster ( Spider-Man: No Way Home). Sometimes, this strategy worked ( Free Guy and Shang-Chi were genuine hits with great word-of-mouth), and sometimes it didn’t ( The Suicide Squad, Snake Eyes, and In the Heights were, at best, disappointments). Waves of variants and lagging vaccination and booster shot rates caused most studios to be skittish, with most months having just one or two significant releases. Disney didn’t even bother to do that with their Pixar movies, forgoing theatrical altogether (save for a dozen or so movie houses) for Soul, Luca, and Turning Red.Ģ021 was better if a bit scattershot. ![]() To bolster their then-struggling HBO Max service, WB did the unthinkable: They released their movies in the few theaters that were open and premiered them on their service simultaneously. ![]() Unable to release their movies, Hollywood kept delaying their big releases (Paramount with Top Gun, MGM with No Time to Die) or relegated their product to their new streaming services (virtually every major studio except Sony). Like everything else, the movie industry was crippled when the COVID-19 pandemic began in the spring of 2020. It’s still not too late for some studios to fix an easy problem, but with the last of the summer blockbusters set to debut, time is running out fast to do so. This lull has been apparent to insiders and the entertainment press for a good while now, and the situation is made worse by streamer-owned studios opting to feed their content pipeline rather than support the exhibition business that keeps the Hollywood eco-system going.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |