Comic-con is tomorrow, the day that will be nothing but me sitting at my computer updating you guys on interesting comic-con news. So tonight I've decided to talk about an interesting topic- money.
The box office of Summer 2014 has been nothing but disappointing to say the least. Most of the summer movies have under performed, with few surprises, some have dropped significantly in only their second weekend and only one movie has broken the $100 million dollar mark opening weekend. Money makes the world go around and the same phrase applies to Hollywood too.
This would not have been an issue- twelve years ago. Before the era of the modern day blockbuster, which we are currently living in especially with all the superhero movies. It's an issue because now many blockbusters today (especially after Avengers) are expected to score high and stay that way for a long while. Also the fact that recently it was revealed tickets sales were down 24% then they were last year. This has Hollywood in full "the apocalypse is coming" mode and wondering what the hell is going on?
The common answer is TV and the rise of TV quality which I agree to some extent even though I don't really watch television anymore except for Game of Thrones. Yet I have my own theories and while TV is one of them their are other ones I have. This will mainly be a list because I feel like I can get my thoughts out better if I do a list. Ready? Here we go....
1.) Over crowding
May and June of 2014 had to be two of the most crowded movie months I have ever seen in my life. May contained Amazing Spider-man 2, Neighbors, X-men Days of future past, Maleficent, A million ways to die in the west, and Godzilla coming in week after week of each. June had the fault in our stars, edge of tomorrow, 22 jump street, think like a man 2, and Transformers coming in week after week of each other.
And it really didn't slow down until maybe a week or two ago. With so many big tent-pole blockbuster movies, comedies and movies with it's own huge fan bases coming in all at once with no breaks, their all going to consume each other. Especially with so many of them going after the same demographics, their only going to bite a little profit out of each other and even more as the weeks go on.
Captain America. Hunger Games, Hobbit, the Lego movie and the Fast and Furious franchise all prove you don't have to confine big summer movies to the months of May to August. You can release a movie in April and it will make a profit, you can release a movie in freaking February and it will make a profit. Hollywood, if you want your movies individually to succeed you need space them out from each other. Move to September, move to October, move to March- just move somewhere so that you won't kill each other.
2.) Audience money
Now after that Rant- the economy is not that great. Most people do not have the money or the capacity to buy tickets to go see a new film every week. They might want to go see one movie but in some cases they don't have the money to see this movie and another movie they want to see coming out next week. So they have to choose.
3.) Audience and quality
This somewhat plays into the audience money thing but I do believe that audience, regular movie goers are getting a sense of taste and quality. Now sometimes that's not the case (i.e Transformers) but I feel that with the growing age of the internet letting people be able to access movie criticism and movie sites they start to understand what makes a good movie and a bad movie. Even those who don't movie are starting to figure out a good movie from a bad one. They are also deciding on what they would rather see. While audiences aren't their yet I do believe they are getting much smarter which is starting to effect the box office.
4.) Marketing
A lot movies that really should have passed the $100 million dollar mark or at least the 70- 90 million mark is because their marketing has been horrible, giving people the wrong impression about it causing it to be seen as either generic or bad so people won't see it. A good example could be Edge of Tomorrow a movie that was great, go critical acclaim but due to it's marketing making it look like a generic piece of shit no one turned up to see it. I dare you to go watch the Edge of Tomorrow trailers and not tell me that, the movie does not look like a generic boring Tom Cruise action flick. Marketing can make or break a movie if there is hardly any marketing thrown on it no one will know that movie exists and if the marketing is bad no one will turn up.
Also giving away too much plot points in a marketing campaign (Ex: Amazing Spider-man 2) people will say I've already seen the movie and backoff.
5.) Television
Now for the big one- I think the reason that TV has started to over take the movie population is for many different reasons. For one thing TV quality especially Cable TV( HBO and AMC shows like Game of Thrones, breaking bad, Boardwalk empire etc.) are becoming much better in quality and in some cases more interesting than some of the movies out. It also doesn't have a lot of the problems movies have these days, you don't really have to spend a shit ton of money to watch tv in the confines of your home, it's more approachable, marketing is typically good, they don't overcrowd each other you can easily record a movie or go on Demand or Netflix to watch a movie or TV show. It's just easier.
Now that's my two cents on the matter. Now tomorrow, the battle of Comic con awaits.
Twitter:https://twitter.com/nessaroseboq
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