In the decade after the onset of the Great Recession North American movie ticket sales dropped from 4-5 a year per capita to 3-4 a year--and then after the pandemic dropped to more like 2 a year (certainly to go by the evidence of 2022, and 2023, and 2024 so far).
There can seem any number of reasons for that--like the staleness of the product that studio executives dementedly foist on the public, or the competition from a small screen both more convenient and offering more varied and frequently more intelligent fare, but one factor we should not overlook is that a public that has seen itself financially very pressed in recent years (never has the pretense of generalized "middle classness" looked more threadbare) simply has less time and disposable income for entertainments such as a night out. After all, going out for a movie is rarely just about the price of a ticket (or several of them), while we are seeing drops in the consumption of everything from meals out to live concerts.
Of course, don't expect to hear the entertainment press make too much of that, the more in as pseudo-intellectuals who keep calling themselves "economists" at every opportunity are telling the public that it's doing JUST FINE!
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
How Will the News Media Cover the Last Weeks of the Presidential Campaign of 2024?
Last year the Columbia Journalism Review published an article discussing a quantitative examination of the last two months of the coverage of the mid-term election of 2022 by the New York Times and Washington Post. That study's authors found that their front-page stories, at least, almost entirely disregarded questions of policy--what the candidates promise, and what they might do in office--in favor of the palace intrigue and campaign horse-race crapola that the addicts to "showbusiness for ugly people" who staff the media think the general public love as much as they do.
I cannot see how any intelligent person can regard this as anything but an execrable performance on their part.
Will they do any better in 2024?
As it happens, this campaign season has offered much, much more fodder for palace intrigue and horse-race crapola than most, and in spite of the self-important proclamations of the editorial boards about "how much is at stake," they absolutely lived down to my lowest expectations as they made the most of the opportunities it gave them to be on their absolute worst behavior. I see no reason to expect that they will suddenly start acting like the "professionals" they pretend to be where this election is concerned --though of course whatever happens they will congratulate themselves and tell everyone that they did a wonderful job, because that is what they always do.
I cannot see how any intelligent person can regard this as anything but an execrable performance on their part.
Will they do any better in 2024?
As it happens, this campaign season has offered much, much more fodder for palace intrigue and horse-race crapola than most, and in spite of the self-important proclamations of the editorial boards about "how much is at stake," they absolutely lived down to my lowest expectations as they made the most of the opportunities it gave them to be on their absolute worst behavior. I see no reason to expect that they will suddenly start acting like the "professionals" they pretend to be where this election is concerned --though of course whatever happens they will congratulate themselves and tell everyone that they did a wonderful job, because that is what they always do.
Of the Word "Upset"
It seems common to define the word "upset," when used in the sense of a person's emotional state, as a synonym for "unhappy," "disappointed" or "worried." These are three quite different terms, the result is that the word comes across as vague and mild, and as is often the case with words that seem a bit vague and mild, used to soften an account of the state of the person being described--a person who may be miserable rather than unhappy, outraged rather than disappointed, or frightened rather than worried, described as merely "upset."
Perhaps unsurprisingly given all that the use of the word "upset" to describe a person's emotional state seems to me less than respectful of the person being described in a great many cases. It always makes me think of a parent speaking of a child, with a child's presumably limited mental faculties and understanding of the world in mind--the "adult in the room" telling others that they have an "upset" child with which they must deal. Few adults, I think, would care to be thought of in such terms--especially in any matter of great importance.
As a result Rebecca Solnit, while making an important statement in a recent piece in the Guardian, seemed to me to have made an unfortunate choice in writing its title: "The Mainstream Press is Failing America--and People are Understandably Upset."
For many of them, upset doesn't even begin to describe it--as we find when we read the item for ourselves.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given all that the use of the word "upset" to describe a person's emotional state seems to me less than respectful of the person being described in a great many cases. It always makes me think of a parent speaking of a child, with a child's presumably limited mental faculties and understanding of the world in mind--the "adult in the room" telling others that they have an "upset" child with which they must deal. Few adults, I think, would care to be thought of in such terms--especially in any matter of great importance.
As a result Rebecca Solnit, while making an important statement in a recent piece in the Guardian, seemed to me to have made an unfortunate choice in writing its title: "The Mainstream Press is Failing America--and People are Understandably Upset."
For many of them, upset doesn't even begin to describe it--as we find when we read the item for ourselves.
Monday, September 9, 2024
Boxoffice Pro Has Put Out its Estimate for Joker's Opening
Boxoffice Pro has put out its estimate for Joker's opening weekend gross.
Their forecast currently stands at $115-$145 million--which means that not only before but even after inflation Joker 2 could make considerably more than that earlier movie's $96 million (that figure equal to $117 million in July 2024 terms).
I am not shocked by this forecast, but did not count on it either--as I remembered what it took to make the first Joker a hit. There was what some saw as the bait and switch involved in making a movie about Arthur Fleck appear as if it were the Joker's origin story. There was the atmosphere of moral panic cultivated around the film, which made many prominent film critics disgrace themselves with calls for censorship. All of this helped make the movie's release an event of a kind very hard to repeat, while it seemed to me far from clear whether five years later a sequel to the rather idiosyncratic movie, without that kind of atmosphere surrounding it—whether, with less and less pretense that Fleck is the Joker, with the critics having done a one-eighty and trivialized the movie that made them briefly show their totalitarian true colors and no moral panic in evidence this time, a Joker movie would still be of interest to a wide audience. (Indeed, especially hearing about the sequel's musical aspect I thought of how Martin Scorsese followed up his triumph with Taxi Driver with his flop New York, New York, and how history might unhappily repeat itself.)
This forecast seems to settle the matter to that extent, evidence apparently existing that a sizable audience does want to continue following the Saga of Arthur Fleck. The question now is which way the interest will go in the next month--whether we will see it collapse, hold steady or even surge, and then after that, just how audiences will respond to the movie when they do see it. Even after its big opening the first Joker made three-and-a-half times its first three-day gross ($335 million). It is not wholly out of the question that this movie could do the same--and supplement its domestic take with a robust foreign gross. (The first Joker more than doubled its domestic gross internationally.) The result is that the movie might not just plausibly match the billion-dollar take of the original, but do so in real, inflation-adjusted terms--a feat requiring $1.3 billion at the box office at late 2024 prices.
Their forecast currently stands at $115-$145 million--which means that not only before but even after inflation Joker 2 could make considerably more than that earlier movie's $96 million (that figure equal to $117 million in July 2024 terms).
I am not shocked by this forecast, but did not count on it either--as I remembered what it took to make the first Joker a hit. There was what some saw as the bait and switch involved in making a movie about Arthur Fleck appear as if it were the Joker's origin story. There was the atmosphere of moral panic cultivated around the film, which made many prominent film critics disgrace themselves with calls for censorship. All of this helped make the movie's release an event of a kind very hard to repeat, while it seemed to me far from clear whether five years later a sequel to the rather idiosyncratic movie, without that kind of atmosphere surrounding it—whether, with less and less pretense that Fleck is the Joker, with the critics having done a one-eighty and trivialized the movie that made them briefly show their totalitarian true colors and no moral panic in evidence this time, a Joker movie would still be of interest to a wide audience. (Indeed, especially hearing about the sequel's musical aspect I thought of how Martin Scorsese followed up his triumph with Taxi Driver with his flop New York, New York, and how history might unhappily repeat itself.)
This forecast seems to settle the matter to that extent, evidence apparently existing that a sizable audience does want to continue following the Saga of Arthur Fleck. The question now is which way the interest will go in the next month--whether we will see it collapse, hold steady or even surge, and then after that, just how audiences will respond to the movie when they do see it. Even after its big opening the first Joker made three-and-a-half times its first three-day gross ($335 million). It is not wholly out of the question that this movie could do the same--and supplement its domestic take with a robust foreign gross. (The first Joker more than doubled its domestic gross internationally.) The result is that the movie might not just plausibly match the billion-dollar take of the original, but do so in real, inflation-adjusted terms--a feat requiring $1.3 billion at the box office at late 2024 prices.
Does it Change Anything if Arthur Fleck isn't the Real Joker?
Considering the possibility, or even likelihood, that we are not supposed to take Arthur Fleck as the "real" Joker, it seems natural to ask what that means for the 2019 film--especially if we take it as a Joker origin story, and find it wanting that way, as I admittedly did. Indeed, I saw in the gap between Fleck and what we would expect of the Joker a failure of imagination on the part of the film's makers in their making Fleck such a pathetic figure; in their apparent inability to imagine that a marginalized, ill-treated working-class man might nonetheless be a figure of intelligence and force, rather than just a "clown" who because of his own inherent personal limitations and nothing else failed to make something of his life the way the stupid and repugnant patrician Thomas Wayne makes out the discontented working class to be.
Thinking of Fleck as other than the Joker we knew renders that criticism moot (if Fleck isn't the Joker anyway then it doesn't matter if he doesn't convince us as the Joker)--but it still seems to me plausible that the makers of the movie, reflecting the prejudices of our time, could not imagine anyone living the way Fleck did as anything but a "born loser," in line with the prevailing tendency to dismiss those who have not "got on" as undeserving of success, and by the same token, as equally undeserving of interest or sympathy from anyone else, all as challenge to this attitude is rarer than before. After all, in the early twentieth century the idea that the American Dream as epitomized by Horatio Alger is a cruel lie was one of the great themes of literature, producing figures from Jay Gatsby to Clyde Griffiths to Willy Loman. What compares with that today?
Apparently not Joker's Arthur Fleck.
Thinking of Fleck as other than the Joker we knew renders that criticism moot (if Fleck isn't the Joker anyway then it doesn't matter if he doesn't convince us as the Joker)--but it still seems to me plausible that the makers of the movie, reflecting the prejudices of our time, could not imagine anyone living the way Fleck did as anything but a "born loser," in line with the prevailing tendency to dismiss those who have not "got on" as undeserving of success, and by the same token, as equally undeserving of interest or sympathy from anyone else, all as challenge to this attitude is rarer than before. After all, in the early twentieth century the idea that the American Dream as epitomized by Horatio Alger is a cruel lie was one of the great themes of literature, producing figures from Jay Gatsby to Clyde Griffiths to Willy Loman. What compares with that today?
Apparently not Joker's Arthur Fleck.
Why Do "We" Care About How Much Movies Cost?
Apparently the budget of Joker 2 has been the subject of some critical comment--specifically because it was (reportedly) much larger than the budget for the first film.
Apparently Todd Phillips has had something to say in reply, remarking that reading the items in the press "[i]t seems like they're on the side of the multinational corporations," and indeed "sound like studio executives."
The reason for that, of course is that the entertainment press does significantly represent the views of the corporations, and the studio executives, just as the business press and the press generally represents the views of corporations, executives and the rest--as, of course, social commentators going back at least to Upton Sinclair have explained to the public over and over again. And negatively remarking a big budget has been part of their repertoire for pushing an agenda--specifically attacking a movie and its makers as "out of control" in that way we saw so much of when the studio bosses were out to crush the New Hollywood.
Of course, the desire to see New Hollywood crushed extended far beyond studio bosses looking to regain control of the industry to include those on the right ideologically hostile to the movies Hollywood had started making (and has rarely dared to make since).
Is there something like that afoot in the case of Phillips and Joker 2? Given how uncomfortable the first Joker made the elite stratum from which those who write for the upmarket review pages derive (not least because of those aspects of it that were what we think of as "New Hollywood") it does not seem wholly inconceivable that there would be. If this is a matter of what is actually in the second Joker movie, rather than just a residue of the critical hostility to the first film, then the movie may well have more bite than I suspected.
Apparently Todd Phillips has had something to say in reply, remarking that reading the items in the press "[i]t seems like they're on the side of the multinational corporations," and indeed "sound like studio executives."
The reason for that, of course is that the entertainment press does significantly represent the views of the corporations, and the studio executives, just as the business press and the press generally represents the views of corporations, executives and the rest--as, of course, social commentators going back at least to Upton Sinclair have explained to the public over and over again. And negatively remarking a big budget has been part of their repertoire for pushing an agenda--specifically attacking a movie and its makers as "out of control" in that way we saw so much of when the studio bosses were out to crush the New Hollywood.
Of course, the desire to see New Hollywood crushed extended far beyond studio bosses looking to regain control of the industry to include those on the right ideologically hostile to the movies Hollywood had started making (and has rarely dared to make since).
Is there something like that afoot in the case of Phillips and Joker 2? Given how uncomfortable the first Joker made the elite stratum from which those who write for the upmarket review pages derive (not least because of those aspects of it that were what we think of as "New Hollywood") it does not seem wholly inconceivable that there would be. If this is a matter of what is actually in the second Joker movie, rather than just a residue of the critical hostility to the first film, then the movie may well have more bite than I suspected.
The Possibility That Arthur Fleck is Not the Real Joker: Some Thoughts
While Todd Phillips has dropped hints that Arthur Fleck's "Joker" may not be the real Joker since 2019, the hints have grown more numerous and stronger in the run-up to the release of the sequel. Indeed, as Kaitlyn Booth recently remarked over at Bleeding Cool News that Joker increasingly seems to have been "one of those times when an original story has some recognizable IP painted over it to make it more appealing to the general public."
In other words, Mr. Phillips and company pulled a bait and switch on the public, making them think that a movie titled Joker about a homicidal lunatic clown in Gotham City with a grudge against the Wayne family was a Joker origin story until, after the movie became a cultural phenomenon, no longer requiring the ruse--and even finding the ruse an inconvenience, because the gap between the sales pitch and the actual movie was getting awkwardly large as people looked at Fleck and said "This man's no criminal mastermind," and the follow-up seemed likely to mean even more dissonance for anyone really looking for the Joker--they backed away from the earlier marketing in a manner they hope will allow fans to ignore or forgive the earlier deception.
It is easy enough to picture Hollywood pulling such a maneuver--given that, to the little extent that it shows any alertness or creativity, we are more likely to see it in the smoke and mirrors of its public relations and marketing efforts than in the cinematic art that is the raison d'etre of those efforts, and given too the fact that a movie about "just Arthur Fleck" rather than the Joker would have made nowhere near the stir that Joker did. Still, given that if the movie was far from perfectly faithful to the Batman mythos the makers of the film displayed enough cleverness in utilizing the relevant elements that the character of the Joker plausibly contributed a good deal more than a paint finish--that if the film Todd Phillips made was not truly a Joker story, the Joker was at least an influence, or even creative point of departure, for what he did in the end put before the audience.
In other words, Mr. Phillips and company pulled a bait and switch on the public, making them think that a movie titled Joker about a homicidal lunatic clown in Gotham City with a grudge against the Wayne family was a Joker origin story until, after the movie became a cultural phenomenon, no longer requiring the ruse--and even finding the ruse an inconvenience, because the gap between the sales pitch and the actual movie was getting awkwardly large as people looked at Fleck and said "This man's no criminal mastermind," and the follow-up seemed likely to mean even more dissonance for anyone really looking for the Joker--they backed away from the earlier marketing in a manner they hope will allow fans to ignore or forgive the earlier deception.
It is easy enough to picture Hollywood pulling such a maneuver--given that, to the little extent that it shows any alertness or creativity, we are more likely to see it in the smoke and mirrors of its public relations and marketing efforts than in the cinematic art that is the raison d'etre of those efforts, and given too the fact that a movie about "just Arthur Fleck" rather than the Joker would have made nowhere near the stir that Joker did. Still, given that if the movie was far from perfectly faithful to the Batman mythos the makers of the film displayed enough cleverness in utilizing the relevant elements that the character of the Joker plausibly contributed a good deal more than a paint finish--that if the film Todd Phillips made was not truly a Joker story, the Joker was at least an influence, or even creative point of departure, for what he did in the end put before the audience.
This Summer Kevin Bacon . . . Discovers What Everyone Else Knows
Back when publicizing his horror film MaXXXine (it came out in July) actor Kevin Bacon claimed to have had a special effects makeup artist create a disguise for him so that he could try going about experiencing life as a non-celebrity.
According to Bacon the disguise worked--and very well--in that when he went to a shopping mall "no one" there recognized him.
Apparently he couldn't stand more than a few minutes of this, talking about people "pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, 'I love you,'" while he "had to wait in line to, I don't know, buy a f---ing coffee or whatever." And he concluded "This sucks. I want to go back to being famous."
I have no idea how seriously Bacon intended for us to take his remarks, which can seem like a parody of entitled, clueless privilege. (Is it really the case that complete strangers tell him "I love you" and that he was shocked to not have strangers tell him "I love you?" Did he really have no notion of what it is to stand in line for a cup of coffee?) Still, the relation of the anecdote did seem interesting in that in a society where the conventional injunction is to "Be grateful for what you have" (stiffened with endless regurgitations of propaganda already stale two centuries ago about how the rich have it harder than the poor) Mr. Bacon admitted that, yes, a "regular person" is treated pretty badly by other regular people and it is far, far better to be a celebrity. To, as Upton Sinclair put it in Money Writes!, be "waited upon, flattered, caressed, loved, stared at, cheered, photographed, talked about" the way a celebrity is. And that this is why, in spite of so many celebrities' self-pitying whining about how hard it is to be famous, a "victim of such conditions" as ordinary people endure--living the life of a nobody, treated as a nobody, with all its material deprivations and psychological injuries--"driven to desperation" makes extraordinary efforts in the hope of sudden transport to the world in which the Kevin Bacons live, and is all too often disappointed, staying in the same world they can't bear and dying that much more and that much painfully of the fact every day.
That's reality.
According to Bacon the disguise worked--and very well--in that when he went to a shopping mall "no one" there recognized him.
Apparently he couldn't stand more than a few minutes of this, talking about people "pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, 'I love you,'" while he "had to wait in line to, I don't know, buy a f---ing coffee or whatever." And he concluded "This sucks. I want to go back to being famous."
I have no idea how seriously Bacon intended for us to take his remarks, which can seem like a parody of entitled, clueless privilege. (Is it really the case that complete strangers tell him "I love you" and that he was shocked to not have strangers tell him "I love you?" Did he really have no notion of what it is to stand in line for a cup of coffee?) Still, the relation of the anecdote did seem interesting in that in a society where the conventional injunction is to "Be grateful for what you have" (stiffened with endless regurgitations of propaganda already stale two centuries ago about how the rich have it harder than the poor) Mr. Bacon admitted that, yes, a "regular person" is treated pretty badly by other regular people and it is far, far better to be a celebrity. To, as Upton Sinclair put it in Money Writes!, be "waited upon, flattered, caressed, loved, stared at, cheered, photographed, talked about" the way a celebrity is. And that this is why, in spite of so many celebrities' self-pitying whining about how hard it is to be famous, a "victim of such conditions" as ordinary people endure--living the life of a nobody, treated as a nobody, with all its material deprivations and psychological injuries--"driven to desperation" makes extraordinary efforts in the hope of sudden transport to the world in which the Kevin Bacons live, and is all too often disappointed, staying in the same world they can't bear and dying that much more and that much painfully of the fact every day.
That's reality.
The Box Office Run of It Ends With Us: A Few Thoughts
Boxoffice Pro's first projection for It Ends with Us had it opening in the $20-$30 million range. However, they revised their estimate upward considerably over the following weeks, so that it stood at $45-$55 million just before release, expectations to which the film lived up with a $50 million debut. Since then the movie has not had spectacular holds, but at least decent ones, with the result that 31 days into its North American run it has amassed $141 million. Meanwhile the movie is doing well abroad, actually outearning its domestic gross in the international markets (the split 46/54 in their favor), such that it has already broken the $300 million barrier ($309 million collected at last count), which is very good for a $25 million romance put out in high summer, and enough to mean that, while the movie is already out of the running to be one of the year's top ten grossers, it may yet prove one of its top ten profit-makers when Deadline makes up its list of the year's Most Valuable Blockbuster next spring, way ahead of many movies that grossed much more (or failing that, a near-certain spot on the accompanying list of lower-cost moneymakers, of the kind rarely going to non-horror films).
The movie would seem to confirm the trend I saw last year--namely that the profit-makers reflected careful selection of movies that had a limited but still appreciable audience of very interested filmgoers, and low costs (the animated features based on Nickelodeon animated franchises, Taylor Swift's concert film, Five Nights at Freddy's, in a way even the animated Spider-Man film and Oppenheimer), rather than a mindless pouring of money into gargantuan franchise-based productions in the faith that "Make it and they will come" (which, of course, failed so miserably that year). Right now, as the entertainment press fixates on successes like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine they seem determined to stick with that "Make it and they will come" business-as-usual approach--but I say again that things may not go the way they hope, and if only out of the concern for the bottom line demanded by their Wall Street masters the studio bosses would do well to attend to this movie's example.
The movie would seem to confirm the trend I saw last year--namely that the profit-makers reflected careful selection of movies that had a limited but still appreciable audience of very interested filmgoers, and low costs (the animated features based on Nickelodeon animated franchises, Taylor Swift's concert film, Five Nights at Freddy's, in a way even the animated Spider-Man film and Oppenheimer), rather than a mindless pouring of money into gargantuan franchise-based productions in the faith that "Make it and they will come" (which, of course, failed so miserably that year). Right now, as the entertainment press fixates on successes like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine they seem determined to stick with that "Make it and they will come" business-as-usual approach--but I say again that things may not go the way they hope, and if only out of the concern for the bottom line demanded by their Wall Street masters the studio bosses would do well to attend to this movie's example.
The Summer 2024 Box Office: How Did it Go?
How did the summer of 2024 as a whole go at the box office? The four month period saw theaters take in about $3.59 billion (and only marginally more, $3.62 billion, if they treat the summer season as having extended from the first Friday in May to Labor Day).
By contrast the figure was $3.95 billion in the summer of 2023, about 10 percent more before inflation.
This is a retreat, not an advance, for the box office. And given that the May-August gross in the pre-pandemic years of 2015-2019 averaged $5.4 billion in June 2024 dollars (even with the numbers skewed downward by how Marvel put out its big Avengers events in the last weekend of April rather than the first weekend of May in 2018-2019) it seems safe to say that this summer's gross was a third down from the pre-pandemic average in real terms. It is also the case that even more than the summer of 2023 the summer of 2024 was, to the extent that Hollywood managed at all, carried by just a handful of hits--the three biggest movies of the summer of 2023 accounting for 34 percent of that summer's gross (Barbie, Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy taking in $1.33 billion of the summer's near $4 billion), but the three biggest of 2024 accounting for 44 percent of that summer's weaker gross ($1.6 billion of the $3.6 billion), testifying to how little business the rest of the releases did.
Of course, allowing that some will incline to the view that this was because this summer was a bit on the thin side where big movies were concerned--and I do not entirely disagree. Still, the summer still had Planet of the Apes, Mad Max and Bad Boys, for which there were some hopes (certainly Mad Max did a lot worse than its backers and cheerleaders thought it would), while some hoped for a lot more than they got from the original IF and the not-so-original Twisters--while it is worth remembering that if 2023 had lots of big movies many of them also proved big flops (most obviously The Flash, Indiana Jones and Haunted Mansion, all as to varying degrees Fast and Furious, Transformers, The Little Mermaid, Pixar and Mission: Impossible disappointed). Thus the explanation still leaves us facing the reality that Tinseltown is trying very hard to ignore--that if as Inside Out and Deadpool and Despicable Me demonstrate franchise movies can still make it big after all, only the most in-demand ones are likely to pay off big as films from the weaker franchises underwhelm in a market not what it used to be.
The result is that I stand by what I said earlier this year: within the existing structurally downsized market, rather than mindlessly milking any and every franchise with megabudgeted productions they would be obliged to choose their projects more carefully, and make them with an eye on the budget, with August's biggest in-month success, It Ends with Us, reaffirming that reading of the situation. Even now the movie is not of the year's top ten hits in North America (standing at #11 it can be expected to keep falling down the list as the year progresses)--but even if it did not have the makings of a "tentpole" there really was a sizable audience out there for the material, and between its low budget, and one might add its rather robust overseas earnings (the movie a far bigger hit there than Twisters, and the Quiet Place prequel), such that it may well prove one of its top ten profit-makers when Deadline presents its list next spring.
By contrast the figure was $3.95 billion in the summer of 2023, about 10 percent more before inflation.
This is a retreat, not an advance, for the box office. And given that the May-August gross in the pre-pandemic years of 2015-2019 averaged $5.4 billion in June 2024 dollars (even with the numbers skewed downward by how Marvel put out its big Avengers events in the last weekend of April rather than the first weekend of May in 2018-2019) it seems safe to say that this summer's gross was a third down from the pre-pandemic average in real terms. It is also the case that even more than the summer of 2023 the summer of 2024 was, to the extent that Hollywood managed at all, carried by just a handful of hits--the three biggest movies of the summer of 2023 accounting for 34 percent of that summer's gross (Barbie, Spider-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy taking in $1.33 billion of the summer's near $4 billion), but the three biggest of 2024 accounting for 44 percent of that summer's weaker gross ($1.6 billion of the $3.6 billion), testifying to how little business the rest of the releases did.
Of course, allowing that some will incline to the view that this was because this summer was a bit on the thin side where big movies were concerned--and I do not entirely disagree. Still, the summer still had Planet of the Apes, Mad Max and Bad Boys, for which there were some hopes (certainly Mad Max did a lot worse than its backers and cheerleaders thought it would), while some hoped for a lot more than they got from the original IF and the not-so-original Twisters--while it is worth remembering that if 2023 had lots of big movies many of them also proved big flops (most obviously The Flash, Indiana Jones and Haunted Mansion, all as to varying degrees Fast and Furious, Transformers, The Little Mermaid, Pixar and Mission: Impossible disappointed). Thus the explanation still leaves us facing the reality that Tinseltown is trying very hard to ignore--that if as Inside Out and Deadpool and Despicable Me demonstrate franchise movies can still make it big after all, only the most in-demand ones are likely to pay off big as films from the weaker franchises underwhelm in a market not what it used to be.
The result is that I stand by what I said earlier this year: within the existing structurally downsized market, rather than mindlessly milking any and every franchise with megabudgeted productions they would be obliged to choose their projects more carefully, and make them with an eye on the budget, with August's biggest in-month success, It Ends with Us, reaffirming that reading of the situation. Even now the movie is not of the year's top ten hits in North America (standing at #11 it can be expected to keep falling down the list as the year progresses)--but even if it did not have the makings of a "tentpole" there really was a sizable audience out there for the material, and between its low budget, and one might add its rather robust overseas earnings (the movie a far bigger hit there than Twisters, and the Quiet Place prequel), such that it may well prove one of its top ten profit-makers when Deadline presents its list next spring.
The August 2024 Box Office
August was, by 2024 standards, a fairly good month for the North American movie box office--only the second month this year to overtop the gross of the corresponding month in the prior year, after March. Just as in March this was principally attributable to the success of a single film--the second part of Dune in March, and Deadpool & Wolverine in August, with the latter film's contribution the more striking. Deadpool, after all, came out the month before, and had the first six days of its spectacular-from-the-first run before August 1, during which it took in $280 million (about as much as the second Dune movie made in its whole run), before accounting for over a third of the month's entire box office revenue. (For comparison purposes consider that where Deadpool accounted for 35 percent of the gross, even that savior of the summer of 2023 Barbie the year before managed just 28 percent.)
This is partly a matter of Deadpool's real draw, but also the lack of other really big successes in late July, and certainly in August (which probably helped the already seemingly played-out Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 add $80 million or so to their takes over those weeks, all as Twisters picked up a little more than that, but not much more). After all, the adaptation of the hit video game Borderlands failed just as badly as the buzz said it would, as did the attempt to relaunch the Crow franchise, while if Alien: Romulus will probably break the $100 million barrier it will not be by much. Indeed, the only performer in the lot I would count as worth much of a fuss in any commercial sense, and that mainly relative to its low cost, is It Ends With Us, the $25 million budgeted adaptation of the Colleen Hoover film likely to approach $150 million before it is finished in theaters.
The result is that, with Deadpool and other July releases doing so much to carry the box office (including a Despicable Me 4 bespeaking the franchise's being past its peak, and a Twister movie a far cry from the phenomenal success of the 1996 original) and the successes of August's own releases mainly that by a lower standard, "fairly good" is a very different thing from "sensational." August 2024's final tally of $892 million is just a bit better than the $813 million North America's movie theaters grossed in August 2023--about 10 percent better before inflation, maybe 6 percent after it when those figures are in, while if one removed the highest grosser from each month (cutting Barbie out of August 2023 just as they cut Deadpool out of August 2024) they would find that August 2024 was actually a weaker month than its 2023 counterpart (the gross down by 4 percent in real terms, perhaps). Meanwhile, even with Deadpool's help, if August 2024 bested August 2023, it would seem to still be well down from the $1.08 billion or so August averaged in June 2024 dollars, with just 83 percent of the 2015-2019 average for the month--an improvement over the figures for past months, like the atrocious 43 percent of the pre-pandemic norm seen in May, but all the same, no grounds to imagine business is returning to pre-pandemic levels, precisely because hits like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine do not grow on trees, however much Disney acts as if they do just that.
This is partly a matter of Deadpool's real draw, but also the lack of other really big successes in late July, and certainly in August (which probably helped the already seemingly played-out Despicable Me 4 and Inside Out 2 add $80 million or so to their takes over those weeks, all as Twisters picked up a little more than that, but not much more). After all, the adaptation of the hit video game Borderlands failed just as badly as the buzz said it would, as did the attempt to relaunch the Crow franchise, while if Alien: Romulus will probably break the $100 million barrier it will not be by much. Indeed, the only performer in the lot I would count as worth much of a fuss in any commercial sense, and that mainly relative to its low cost, is It Ends With Us, the $25 million budgeted adaptation of the Colleen Hoover film likely to approach $150 million before it is finished in theaters.
The result is that, with Deadpool and other July releases doing so much to carry the box office (including a Despicable Me 4 bespeaking the franchise's being past its peak, and a Twister movie a far cry from the phenomenal success of the 1996 original) and the successes of August's own releases mainly that by a lower standard, "fairly good" is a very different thing from "sensational." August 2024's final tally of $892 million is just a bit better than the $813 million North America's movie theaters grossed in August 2023--about 10 percent better before inflation, maybe 6 percent after it when those figures are in, while if one removed the highest grosser from each month (cutting Barbie out of August 2023 just as they cut Deadpool out of August 2024) they would find that August 2024 was actually a weaker month than its 2023 counterpart (the gross down by 4 percent in real terms, perhaps). Meanwhile, even with Deadpool's help, if August 2024 bested August 2023, it would seem to still be well down from the $1.08 billion or so August averaged in June 2024 dollars, with just 83 percent of the 2015-2019 average for the month--an improvement over the figures for past months, like the atrocious 43 percent of the pre-pandemic norm seen in May, but all the same, no grounds to imagine business is returning to pre-pandemic levels, precisely because hits like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine do not grow on trees, however much Disney acts as if they do just that.
What Will the Fall Movie Season Bring?
Last year, in the wake of the weak audience response to many franchise films intended for blockbusterdom, and the thinning of this year's release slate by the delays compelled by a historic "double strike" in Hollywood, the expectations for 2024 were not very high--and so far the year has lived down to them. As of August 31 the North American cinematic box office has pulled in some $5.6 billion--as against the $6.6 billion it managed in the same eight months last year (a billion behind!), and what, in June 2024 dollars, is the $10 billion the box office averaged by that time of the year in pre-pandemic 2015-2019. Moreover, it seems significant that the situation would have been far worse if not for the overperformance of a couple of hits--Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine by themselves accounting for 22 percent of the entire year's take, testifying to the general weakness of the market.
Will the box office get a much-needed bump in the year's last four months? Well, as I write this the sequel to 1988's Beetlejuice is hitting theaters, while box office analysts regard the sequel to 2019's Joker as having fairly bright prospects--both expected to open well north of $100 million. After that there is Venom 3, and Gladiator 2, and Moana 2 and a Lion King prequel, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, among others. Those sick of sequels and prequels may be annoyed by this Hollywood-business-as-usual slate, and indeed it seems certain that some of them will prove the bad ideas some of them sound like, but all the same, I see no reason why at least some of these movies will not sell a good many tickets collectively, such that the rest of the year looks a lot more like July or even August did than May (yikes).
Still, my expectation is that this year will not refute my argument that the box office has seen a structural change--that the market has shrunk (North Americans on average going to the movies twice a year rather than 3+ as before), with franchise movies tougher sells (that they came out for more of the gimmicky, cult-y, genre-subverting postmodernism of Deadpool is a questionable basis for thinking the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been saved), with the terms of box office success altered, all as at a minimum North American ticket sales adding up to the $9 billion 2023 managed by New Year's Day seems a longshot. Indeed, this year Hollywood, running a billion dollars behind last year's box office at the same point in the year, would have to at least match the grosses of the last four months of 2023 just to hit the $8 billion mark envisaged for it last year, and considerably outdo it to reach $9 billion, all as one should remember that, as the past summer should remind all concerned, a few overperformers cannot be expected to all by themselves make up for a great mass of underperformers.
Will the box office get a much-needed bump in the year's last four months? Well, as I write this the sequel to 1988's Beetlejuice is hitting theaters, while box office analysts regard the sequel to 2019's Joker as having fairly bright prospects--both expected to open well north of $100 million. After that there is Venom 3, and Gladiator 2, and Moana 2 and a Lion King prequel, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3, among others. Those sick of sequels and prequels may be annoyed by this Hollywood-business-as-usual slate, and indeed it seems certain that some of them will prove the bad ideas some of them sound like, but all the same, I see no reason why at least some of these movies will not sell a good many tickets collectively, such that the rest of the year looks a lot more like July or even August did than May (yikes).
Still, my expectation is that this year will not refute my argument that the box office has seen a structural change--that the market has shrunk (North Americans on average going to the movies twice a year rather than 3+ as before), with franchise movies tougher sells (that they came out for more of the gimmicky, cult-y, genre-subverting postmodernism of Deadpool is a questionable basis for thinking the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been saved), with the terms of box office success altered, all as at a minimum North American ticket sales adding up to the $9 billion 2023 managed by New Year's Day seems a longshot. Indeed, this year Hollywood, running a billion dollars behind last year's box office at the same point in the year, would have to at least match the grosses of the last four months of 2023 just to hit the $8 billion mark envisaged for it last year, and considerably outdo it to reach $9 billion, all as one should remember that, as the past summer should remind all concerned, a few overperformers cannot be expected to all by themselves make up for a great mass of underperformers.
Is a Celebrity Obliged to be a Good Role Model?
Is a celebrity obliged to be a good role model?
I admit that it's not the sort of question to which I am much inclined to give time, and have thought about it now only because of the way that, in a manner entirely consistent with the increasingly demented state of the cultural discourse in the country, Taylor Swift's personal life, in spite of a complete lack of what ordinarily makes for scandal, has become a subject not just of culture war but a matter of presidential politics (!).
I will say it again, the nervous breakdown evident in the '90s has just gone on getting worse--while the '90s seems to me especially relevant because amid the chatter I couldn't help recalling how basketball great Charles Barkley defied the conventional wisdom about that question by answering it with a firm "No."
Considering the question I find myself siding with Barkley here for the plain and simple reason that a celebrity does not surrender their rights as a citizen and bring upon themselves subjection to a higher moral standard just because they have become famous--with this especially going today with the intensity of the surveillance of public figures hugely amplified by the digital age, and the emergence of a "cancel culture" which regards any social misstep as meriting the destruction of a career, while equating accusation with guilt. ("An actor provoked by an irresponsible idiot of a director lost their temper on set twenty-five years ago--allegedly! That's just totally unacceptable! See that they never work in this town again!")
Indeed, with so few of those prone to scream loudest about morality inclined to hold even those elected or appointed to the highest public offices to any standard at all in not just their private life but their conduct as public office-holders, it seems absurd and grotesque that they should hold an athlete, or a pop singer, up to such scrutiny.
I admit that it's not the sort of question to which I am much inclined to give time, and have thought about it now only because of the way that, in a manner entirely consistent with the increasingly demented state of the cultural discourse in the country, Taylor Swift's personal life, in spite of a complete lack of what ordinarily makes for scandal, has become a subject not just of culture war but a matter of presidential politics (!).
I will say it again, the nervous breakdown evident in the '90s has just gone on getting worse--while the '90s seems to me especially relevant because amid the chatter I couldn't help recalling how basketball great Charles Barkley defied the conventional wisdom about that question by answering it with a firm "No."
Considering the question I find myself siding with Barkley here for the plain and simple reason that a celebrity does not surrender their rights as a citizen and bring upon themselves subjection to a higher moral standard just because they have become famous--with this especially going today with the intensity of the surveillance of public figures hugely amplified by the digital age, and the emergence of a "cancel culture" which regards any social misstep as meriting the destruction of a career, while equating accusation with guilt. ("An actor provoked by an irresponsible idiot of a director lost their temper on set twenty-five years ago--allegedly! That's just totally unacceptable! See that they never work in this town again!")
Indeed, with so few of those prone to scream loudest about morality inclined to hold even those elected or appointed to the highest public offices to any standard at all in not just their private life but their conduct as public office-holders, it seems absurd and grotesque that they should hold an athlete, or a pop singer, up to such scrutiny.
The Astonishing Staying Power of Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4
Initially making my prediction for Inside Out 2's gross I suggested the $600-$850 million range for where it would finish up. As I write the movie is approaching twice the high end of the range I predicted--$1.7 billion. This has partly been a matter of the movie's extraordinary domestic performance, the movie surpassing the $650 million mark over Labor Day weekend.
I did not make a prediction about Despicable Me 4 prior to its release, but after its fourth weekend I did have something to say of its gross--and contended that there was a good chance of the film's failing to reach the $800 million mark. A month later it surpassed the $900 million mark (and has now taken in $930 million, and counting).
Both movies proved "leggier" than I expected, even fairly late into their releases. Where the original Inside Out fell just short of its quadrupling its opening weekend gross domestically, the sequel, even with a far bigger opening, managed a bigger multiplier over its North American run (4.23 versus 3.94 as of September 8). Likewise where I thought Despicable Me 4 played out at about the $290 million mark it had hit in North America, and the $700 million or so it had made globally, it proved to have quite some more way to go with even better late run holds than Inside Out 2 managed (its weekend grosses falling just 22 percent in the weekend right after my comment, with the pattern more or less holding afterward, adding almost $70 million more to its take).
In fairness that works out to Inside Out 2 being a somewhat bigger hit than we might have expected even late in a run which made clear that it was a giant hit early on, and Despicable Me 4 not showing quite so much erosion of its gross as seemed the case a few weeks ago but still indicative of a downward trend in the now rather long-running franchise's fortunes (though not so much so that a Despicable Me 5 seems fairly plausible). Still, they have been remarkable performers, especially given the lowering of expectations that 2023 suggested for such movie--which I am still inclined to think is indicative of the bigger picture that the focus on just a few successes entails. After all, i these films have cleaned up that reflected the comparative weakness of the competition as pretty much everything else aimed at the same market performed rather poorly (from IF to the adaptation of Crockett Johnson's children's classic Harold and the Purple Crayon) in a generally thin summer, enabling the few strong prospects to "clean up" (just as Top Gun 2 did two summers ago). It will take more than that to evidentiate any really broad revival of moviegoing beyond the levels seen in the last three years, and I think that anyone arguing for that on the basis of the evidence would do well to wait and see how the rest of this year goes.
I did not make a prediction about Despicable Me 4 prior to its release, but after its fourth weekend I did have something to say of its gross--and contended that there was a good chance of the film's failing to reach the $800 million mark. A month later it surpassed the $900 million mark (and has now taken in $930 million, and counting).
Both movies proved "leggier" than I expected, even fairly late into their releases. Where the original Inside Out fell just short of its quadrupling its opening weekend gross domestically, the sequel, even with a far bigger opening, managed a bigger multiplier over its North American run (4.23 versus 3.94 as of September 8). Likewise where I thought Despicable Me 4 played out at about the $290 million mark it had hit in North America, and the $700 million or so it had made globally, it proved to have quite some more way to go with even better late run holds than Inside Out 2 managed (its weekend grosses falling just 22 percent in the weekend right after my comment, with the pattern more or less holding afterward, adding almost $70 million more to its take).
In fairness that works out to Inside Out 2 being a somewhat bigger hit than we might have expected even late in a run which made clear that it was a giant hit early on, and Despicable Me 4 not showing quite so much erosion of its gross as seemed the case a few weeks ago but still indicative of a downward trend in the now rather long-running franchise's fortunes (though not so much so that a Despicable Me 5 seems fairly plausible). Still, they have been remarkable performers, especially given the lowering of expectations that 2023 suggested for such movie--which I am still inclined to think is indicative of the bigger picture that the focus on just a few successes entails. After all, i these films have cleaned up that reflected the comparative weakness of the competition as pretty much everything else aimed at the same market performed rather poorly (from IF to the adaptation of Crockett Johnson's children's classic Harold and the Purple Crayon) in a generally thin summer, enabling the few strong prospects to "clean up" (just as Top Gun 2 did two summers ago). It will take more than that to evidentiate any really broad revival of moviegoing beyond the levels seen in the last three years, and I think that anyone arguing for that on the basis of the evidence would do well to wait and see how the rest of this year goes.
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