As of this writing — and I’ll explain in a bit why things will look even worse on Monday — the 2017 summer box office is 8% behind last year. Overall, the year-to-year box office is down 2%. And that is probably the good news, or at least not the worst news. The no good, very bad, OMG! news is that Hollywood is also running out of franchises.
The once surefire and lucrative Cars, Alien, Smurfs, Underworld, Resident Evil, and Transformers golden geese are probably dead. With massive production and advertising (P&A) budgets — that box office returns must at least double in order for the studios to merely break even (theatres take an average of 50%; China takes 75%) — even the foreign markets can’t save these duds.
.png)
.png)
