With Northern Hemisphere summer coming to a close, we can finally say goodbye to what was arguably the most horrendous movie season in the history of summer movie seasons. Good riddance.
Profits dipped and quality plunged. Ticket sales in the United States and Canada are projected to total $4.33 billion, a 2% decline from last year, according to the media analytics firm ComScore. But the fine print is whatâs important. Disney monopolised the summer to a vast degree, meaning a disconcerting amount of that revenue belongs to one studio alone. Even sequels that seemed like surefire hits for rival companies â Warner Bros.â âGodzilla: King of the Monstersâ and Sonyâs âThe Angry Birds Movie 2,â for example â fell short of expectations.
Who can blame audiences for that? âKing of the Monstersâ was soulless cacophony. Why leave the couch? At the risk of sounding like a grumpy bore, the summerâs lineup had little to offer discerning moviegoers itching for variety, aside from a few gems (âBooksmart,â âThe Farewell,â âOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodâ).
The blockbuster deluge nowadays starts in mid- to late April, which gives us four monthsâ worth of existential crises rippling through the industry. Here are some upshots.
Disney Had The Quantity. Where Was The Quality?
The US Summer began with an âEndgame.â After 11 years and 22 instalments, Marvelâs core âAvengersâ franchise bid a three-hour adieu to Iron Man and the other OG crusaders who turned superheroes into Hollywoodâs leading capital. Good luck to anything that hopes to unseat its spot atop the yearâs box-office charts, where it became the fastest movie in history to earn $1 billion globally.
More tellingly, âAvengers: Endgameâ was a harbinger of Disneyâs huge summer payday, as well as a reflection of the studioâs overwhelming cultural sovereignty. No one can compete with the Mouse House, which in March added the 84-year-old 21st Century Fox to a cache that already includes Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel.
Disney followed âEndgameâ with a live-action âAladdin,â âToy Story 4â and a pseudo-live-action âLion King,â three overwhelming moneymakers that tweaked familiar stories from the â90s. As a result, Disney can now claim four (including Marchâs âCaptain Marvelâ) of the yearâs five highest grossers â an imperialism that threatens to further homogenise Hollywoodâs ethos. If Disney has no steadfast competition in the marketplace, what incentive does it have to amplify the creativity of its output? (Sorry, but no matter what you thought of the âLion Kingâ reboot, âcreativeâ is not a word that applies.)
This isnât the only red flag in Disneyâs corner. The studioâs leadership axed much of Foxâs development slate after the acquisition went through, which implies that Fox â home of exemplars like âAll About Eve,â âThe Sound of Music,â âAlienâ and âMrs. Doubtfireâ â will be moulded to resemble its parent company. Meanwhile, the forthcoming streaming service Disney+ announced new editions of âHome Alone,â âNight at the Museum,â âCheaper by the Dozenâ and âDiary of a Wimpy Kid.â Itâs old hat to bemoan the industryâs remake mania, but the summer has felt more unrelenting in this department than ever before.
Brad Pitt Lost To âThe Lion King,â Again
Despite being summerâs highest-grossing movie without a franchise affiliation, âOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodâ debuted behind âThe Lion King,â which held on to the No. 1 ranking in its second weekend. âHollywoodâ is currently Quentin Tarantinoâs second-highest-grossing feature behind âDjango Unchained.â But one of the filmâs leads, Brad Pitt, endured a bit of deja vu. For the third time in his career, his movie succumbed to those cats from Pride Rock.
In 1994, several months after the original âLion Kingâ had opened, âInterview with the Vampireâ fell behind the Disney musical its sixth weekend in theaters. In 2011, âMoneyballâ debuted to less revenue than a 3-D conversion of the â94 smash. And now, this. Pitt still just canât wait to be king.
Comedy Feels Like A Dying Art
Summer was once a laugh factory. From the â80s through the 2000s, live-action comedies were as much a seasonal staple as action spectaculars and family fare. Almost every year, multiple comedies landed among summerâs 10 highest grossers. The sun didnât shine without a major Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey, Adam Sandler, Whoopi Goldberg, Will Smith or Julia Roberts vehicle there to attract its rays. But as intellectual property has replaced movie stars as Hollywoodâs box-office kingmakers, comedies built around A-list personalities have grown scarcer. This year, there was nary a âTrading Places,â âBack to the Future,â âSister Actâ or âThe 40-Year-Old Virginâ to be found.
âOnce Upon a Time in Hollywoodâ is the closest we got to a hit comedy, but the cult of Tarantino occupies a rarified space that transcends genre classifications. Discounting it, âYesterday,â âGood Boys,â âThe Hustle,â âLong Shot,â âBooksmart,â âStuber,â âLate Night,â âPomsâ and âThe Dead Donât Dieâ all opened to middling sums, with most underperforming by significant margins. Even the most acclaimed of the bunch, âBooksmart,â which should have been every bit as fruitful as the similarly themed 2007 summer knockout âSuperbad,â could only muster a depressing $22.7 million.
The Reevesurgence Is Upon Us
Letâs pause for some good news. Hereâs to everyone who adores Keanu Reevesâ glower.
In May, the third entry in the âJohn Wickâ series defeated the odds, halting the three-week sweep that âAvengers: Endgameâ enjoyed. âWickâ marks a rare series to maintain mega-success without coasting on established source material. (The other example: âThe Fast and the Furious,â which was recently spun off via the lucrative âHobbs and Shaw.â) Later that month, adopting the ultimate movie-star power move, Reeves played a heightened version of himself â aggressive, mysterious, bizarre â in the Netflix rom-com âAlways Be My Maybe.â Come June, he voiced a daredevil action figure in âToy Story 4.â And in August, âThe Matrix 4â was announced, ensuring the Reevesurgence has legs.
This quasi-comeback â Reeves never went anywhere, after all â is a refreshing example of a hardworking actor finally getting his due, and a testament to the alchemy of classic screen-star mojo.
So Many Great Actresses Wasted By Terrible Scripts
One of summerâs least lucrative horror stories: Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Tessa Thompson, Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, Elisabeth Moss, Cate Blanchett and Diane Keaton were lost to bad movies. Not routine disappointments, but flat-out misdemeanours.
I have a soft spot for âMa,â which gave the 47-year-old Spencer her first lead role and is almost bonkers enough to overcome its own shoddiness, but âThe Hustleâ (starring Hathaway and Rebel Wilson), âMen in Black: Internationalâ (starring Thompson), âThe Kitchenâ (starring McCarthy, Haddish and Moss), âWhereâd You Go, Bernadetteâ (starring Blanchett and based on a difficult-to-adapt bestseller) and âPomsâ (starring Keaton and other top-notch septuagenarians) barely merited green lights. Over at Netflix, âWine Countryâ (starring Amy Poehler and friends) and âOtherhoodâ (starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette and a scandal-ridden Felicity Huffman) arrived with little fanfare and baffling banality.
If these films looked good on paper, you wouldnât know it from the finished products. Each required its respective star(s) to infuse life into dead weight. Character-driven movies like these serve as alternatives to the more costly provisions that monopolise summer. But when none deliver, itâs harder to guarantee a diversified slate in the future.
Sundance Fare Didnât Fare Well
Every January, distribution companies snatch up a smattering of movies at the Sundance Film Festival, some of which become blockbuster counterprogramming. Those that hit theaters in recent months were alarmingly DOA.
Amazon spent huge sums on âLate Nightâ ($13 million) and âBrittany Runs a Marathonâ ($14 million), while Warner Bros. shelled out an eye-popping $15 million for the Bruce Springsteen singalong âBlinded by the Light.â Itâs easy to see the appeal of these acquisitions: Each is an ostensible crowd-pleaser that would have obvious commercial clout in a less homogenous marketplace. But the disparity between Sundanceâs indie sensibilities and Americaâs current moviegoing habits has never been greater. Amazon barely recouped its expenses on the poorly marketed âLate Night,â but at least the retail behemoth will benefit from exclusive streaming rights. Warner Bros., on the other hand, has to more or less cut its losses on âBlinded by the Light,â which bowed to a paltry $4.3 million in wide release. (âBrittany Runs a Marathonâ just opened last weekend, so time will tell how far it can sprint.)
Meanwhile, âThe Tomorrow Man,â âOpheliaâ and âLuceâ didnât even crack $1 million in earnings. âThe Last Black Man in San Franciscoâ scraped together $4.5 million â a decent tally for an idiosyncratic gentrification drama without name-value stars, but nothing earth-shattering.
âThe Farewellâ was the only Sundance success story, and even it doesnât look very flashy on paper. Featuring last summerâs breakout star Awkwafina, the family dramedy has amassed $14.7 million after more than a month in theaters. Trendy distributor A24 spent about $6 million on the movieâs rights, so without knowing how much subsequent marketing costs set the company back, thatâs a profitable turnaround and a good omen for second-time director Lulu Wang, who in July booked a sci-fi feature for her next project.