Has the Entertainment Press Still Failed to Grasp the Reality of the Film Market?

In considering the answer to the question that is the title of this post I think it fair to say that, as one always deriding the generality of the entertainment press as claqueurs and courtiers of the industry about which they write (epithets mild next to the ones they truly deserve) I am perfectly aware that what they say is not necessarily what they actually think--with the gap between one thing and the other likely to be especially large in this period of extraordinary turmoil for the industry.

That said, it has been impossible for commentators desirous of retaining any credibility at all to avoid offering some acknowledgment of what has been happening in the year that saw its first really big release, Ant-Man 3, noticeably underperforming, and The Flash, Captain Marvel 2 and Aquaman 2 all flop. But all the same, I find the folks at Screen Rant predicting a $1-$1.2 billion gross for Deadpool 3. Looking at that I find myself thinking of how at the start of 2023 they predicted $1 billion for Ant-Man 3, more than that for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 ($1.2 billion), and only slightly less for Captain Marvel 2 ($950 million). They were way off on all three counts, and in the same direction, and I can only suspect that the optimism about Deadpool is more of the same--while I find myself also noticing that in a Deadline piece warning that they expect the box office to bring in a billion less in 2024 than it did in the still rather weak year of 2023, still assuring the reader that there is "hope" in the year's 31 tentpoles.

Looking at that list of "tentpoles" I see not the solution to Hollywood's woes, but the problem--that in 2024, just as in 2023, even after the bumping of a number of films by the historic "double strike" of Hollywood's actors and writers, the release slate is packed with a lot of very costly movies that the public is just less and less interested in seeing; with more shameless retreads of stuff gone stale, epitomized not just by the plenitude of new superhero films even as the genre seems to be collapsing in the manner of the musical back in the '60s (like a Madame Web movie to which very few seem to be looking forward) but by how far back the studios are reaching for past hits to which to make sequels (like Twister from the summer of 1996, and Gladiator). The movies will play, few will come to see them, and Hollywood will again and again record colossal losses on balance sheets already drenched in red ink--all as the chances of surprise hits like Barbie doing something to save the day look very slim indeed this year.