Andrew Hart of the Huffington Post writes that Film Industry Has Worst Summer Since 1997, with ticket sales this summers shrinking 15% from last summer to $3.9 billion. July box office sales were down 30% according to the New York Times.
For the first time in 13 years, no summer film netted $300 million in ticket sales domestically. Not even Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy," the highly-anticipated superhero film that led this summer's box office sales, could save the summer. And as Vox notes, a dry summer is an especially hefty hit. Summer is when the film industry banks on people heading to theaters, typically producing the greatest months of ticket sales.
It wasn't just the summer's top-selling flicks that disappointed. Flops were plentiful. Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables 3," the star-studded "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For," the critically-touted "Edge of Tomorrow," "How to Train Your Dragon 2," and Cameron Diaz's saucy "Sex Tape," all fell short of expectations. And don't forget about the sequels! The summer had plenty of them, but audiences weren't having much to do with them. Sales to "Transformers: Age of Extinction, "Planes: Fire & Rescue," "Think Like a Man Too," and "Amazing Spider-Man 2" saw declines in sales compared to previous summer's installments, the New York Times reports.
Analysts had predicted a drop due to new entertainment options such as online streaming, marquee television events like the World Cup, and scuttled movie release plans. But the worst summer in box office ticket sales since 1997 caught analysts and the industry off guard. "It's a noticeable difference," Phil Contrino, the chief analyst at BoxOffice.com told Vox, adding, "We really needed more films that ended up in the $80 million-$150 million range domestically. That would have helped compensate for the tentpoles that ended up underperforming slightly."
Hart believes this is cyclical due to fact that so many of the "strongest franchises are lined up for 2015." Could it be, however, that with such such an abundance with "world class" writing on cable TV from some of the new networks we all have such a backlog of masterpiece "already "classics" to watch on TV that the idea of paying $10 a piece for tickets, and $15 for snacks and a drink to sit in an uncomfortable chair to see something likely to be a "cheesy dog" of a movie, when we can catch up or sure things at home.
My girlfriend and I watched the first four episodes of Breaking Bad tonight which we missed when it came around the first time.
The theater movie seen may be about fall off of a cliff for good. People who have invested in their own $5,000 ultra high def 4K big screen systems want to show it off to their friends in their own home theater. Why would we go out to take a chance in a public theater.
Where one would have to sit in the same sit as hundreds of other people who may have had strange contagious diseases?
I don't think so!
Quick, call your broker an dump all of theater stock. I predict a downward trend.