My heart is actually in pain as I look over the pathetic assortment of movies that came out this summer. As a fan of film, a tear rolls down my cheek looking at Alice in Wonderland 2, Ice Age 5 and a remake of Ghostbusters. Reports noted that a $100 million remake of Ben-Hur only made just over $11 million in its opening weekend. But who wouldn't want to see these interesting and exciting movies?
Summer 2014 brought The Fault in Our Stars, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Guardians of the Galaxy. Summer 2015 had Mad Max: Fury Road, Jurassic World, Inside Out and Straight Outta Compton. There was variety and quality. Not to mention big box office.
Summer 2016 had the safe bets Captain America: Civil War and Finding Dory, but there wasn't much variety, quality or box office. Who was interested in that Tarzan movie apparently worth $180 million? Few turned up for the third Star Trek movie. And did anybody walk away from Suicide Squad with a big smile on their face? This was one of the most boring and disappointing summer movie seasons in a while.
Alice 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, The BFG, The Legend of Tarzan and Ghostbusters. All of them cost over $100 million and none could double their budgets worldwide. Star Trek Beyond is on that list, but still has a few foreign territories to reach - including China - and Ben-Hur just came out to be "fair." China barely saved Warcraft and Independence Day 2 barely made it out of that list.
Regardless, the nine movies just mentioned were supposed to be big moneymaking blockbusters. And they're all disappointments.
Not to say there weren't any good times in the theater this summer. Ghostbusters and Star Trek Beyond received favorable reviews, as well as The Nice Guys, Popstar and Florence Foster Jenkins. The point is, studios are greenlighting projects that, regardless of quality, are movies that people just don't want to see.
It's tough to get people to go to the movies nowadays. Not only does everybody know a website where they can see every movie ever made for free, but ticket prices have never been higher, there's 500 TV shows out there and you're on the internet right now. Audiences didn't go to the movies, because Hollywood didn't give them a reason.
Captain America: Civil War is the 12th highest-grossing movie of all time worldwide and Finding Dory is the biggest animated movie ever made domestically. Secret Life of Pets made some noise and Suicide Squad is crossing half a billion bucks worldwide (although the amount of negative press it brought to Warner Bros. probably wasn't worth it).
We live in a world where a bomb goes off every day, police shoot innocent people and the two most hated people in the world are running for president. And people still didn't want to go to the movies to escape this hell.
Next summer is looking on the up. It's another load of sequel, prequel, spinoff, franchise garbage but there's more Guardians of the Galaxy, Kingsman, Spider-Man and Planet of the Apes. Not to mention guaranteed box office gold in Cars 3, Transformers 5 and Pirates of the Caribbean 5. Yeah there's a Barbie movie and an animated Emoji movie, but there's a new Christopher Nolan flick and a sci-fi from the writers of Deadpool. We got box office, variety and hopefully quality.
Thank God, because studios might go bankrupt if they put out nine more $100 million bombs in a short amount of time.
Summer 2016 is over and I couldn't be happier. You did this to me Hollywood.
Thanks to Box Office Mojo for the budget and box office stats.