The numbers are in and…this is turning out to be the worst domestic summer box office in eight years, according to those with a close eye on the industry. In an era when summer blockbuster films always seem to be pushing the industry to new heights, 2014 has been a perfect storm of mediocrity, with a few rare exceptions. Films that were supposed to be great underperformed, and staples of the season have been missing altogether.
Even though there have been no mammoth disasters or flops (other than critically), no film will cross $300M at the domestic box office for the first time since 2001. The top performing films of the summer are Maleficent, X-Men: Days of Future Past and Transformers: Age of Extinction, but all are around $230M, and will not hit $300M.
But it’s also about what hasn’t performed, or didn’t show up at all. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 was not the hit Sony wanted it to be, and it’s made less than its predecessor off relatively bad word of mouth and a critical scathing. Weirdly, How to Train Your Dragon 2 drastically underperformed for Dreamworks as well, even though the first film was a huge hit and the second debuted to incredibly positive reviews.
What’s missing? Well, there was no Pixar movie this summer for the first time in recent memory, and those are guaranteed to bring in at least a few hundred million on the name alone. Nor was there another monster animated Disney hit like Frozen the previous year. There have been almost no breakout comedies, and The Purge: Anarchy is so far only a modest horror success.
THR spoke to Jon Favreau, who moved from Iron Man to Chef, which turned out to be a hit given its budget. He talked about how audiences are changing, and how that could contribute to this year’s box office problem.
“Filmmaker Jon Favreau agrees that the popularity of television and new technologies are altering viewing habits. “I think times are changing. We have to acknowledge that and not try to chase what used to be,” says Favreau, who is currently prepping Jungle Book for Disney. At the same time, he said there will continue to be a worldwide appetite for big spectacle movies based on known brands.”
That may be true, but I also just don’t think there were ever going to be any monster movies this year (other than Godzilla, pun intended). Next year has Avengers: Age of Ultron, and after that in 2016 we have both Batman V. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Star Wars Episode VII to look forward to. Any of those three may be enough to salvage what would be an otherwise lackluster season.
There’s still a short bit of time for this summer to turn things around, but it relies mainly on the only potentially big movies we have left. Hercules and Lucy are already getting middling reviews, so it seems unlikely either will end up being huge given that neither is a Transformers film that can make $700M worldwide with a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes. Ninja Turtles may draw more money from the nostalgia/Michael Bay crowd. Guardians of the Galaxy has always been a risk, relying on unknown characters and a charming, but relatively unproven leading man in Chris Pratt. Provided the film is as good as it has the potential to be, it could end up being a saving grace for the summer. But if audiences don’t show up, it could be one of its biggest flops instead, as the film boasts a massive production and marketing budget.
I do think it’s a combination of factors that have led to this point, and Favreau is right about other forms of media starting to crowd out film in many ways. But I also think this summer lacked any truly impressive films. There were good ones, but none that were going to be $500M/$1B behemoths.
But given the release slate of the next few years, I doubt we’ll see another summer this bad for a while. Hollywood has some big projects on deck, and audiences will turn out in droves for them, Netflix and PlayStation aside.
[Photo via Sony]
