Weekend Numbers [June 07-09, 2024] | actuals | 56.5M BAD BOYS: RIDE OR DIE | 10.0M GARFIELD | 7.8M IF | 7.0M THE WATCHERS

[Firepower]

3 minutes ago, cannastop said:

last year and 2022 were also bum years. Complaints about ticket prices have been around for a long time, even in 2019, that box office free for all year.

That's why it doesn't explain what's happening this year, ticket prices were high for a while.

[Boxofficerules]

3 minutes ago, Reed121 said:

Sorry this is very wrong.  Scenes from The Rush Hour movies attract all of activity and positivity on Twitter. There is a lot of love for this series .

If they did it right it would easily out gross these recent Bad Boys movies.

Isn’t Jackie Chan too old to be doing the fighting he’s known for?

[dallas]

7 minutes ago, Firepower said:

That's why it doesn't explain what's happening this year, ticket prices were high for a while.

It's not just this year, the box office has been on a downward spiral since at least August 2023.

[dallas]

8 minutes ago, Boxofficerules said:

Isn’t Jackie Chan too old to be doing the fighting he’s known for?

He just did Karate Kid. 

[Cmasterclay]

23 minutes ago, Speedorito said:

No offense but I feel like remembering lines and bar trivia aren’t really the best metrics for cultural impact. I could not tell you a single line from Despicable Me 3 but that franchise, especially the Minions, is crazy popular.

 

I also don’t think “cultural impact” really means much to most people. Weren’t people saying Avatar 2 wouldn’t be super big because you don’t see blue people at conventions and no one could remember the names of the main characters?

Eh, I always disagreed about Avatar. And the Minions themselves are at least a very memorable bit of pop culture lore.

 

For me, it's an intrinsic thing. Bar trivia is just a setting to be able to tell these things. Everybody knows Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump and Lion King and Titanic and all the lines and characters associated with them. Well, not everybody, obviously, but you know what I mean. They feel part of something bigger in our culture. We didn't create as many moments and memories like that in the 2010s - just rehashing the older moments. And that has a domino effect moving forward. Of course, it does take time to tell what the canon is, but idk, I  definitely remember everybody talking about Helm's Deep and Jack Sparrow at the time in a way they definitely aren't talking about any character or moments from the post 2015 blockbuster scene with a few exceptions like the Snap or BB-8.

[Speedorito]

5 minutes ago, dallas said:

It's not just this year, the box office has been on a downward spiral since at least August 2023.

I mean, it’s the same logic. Prices didn’t magically shoot up 2/3 of the way through 2023.

 

Honestly, I never heard the “It’s too expensive!” excuse actually taken seriously by some people until this May. I feel like there are better reasons to explain why the landscape has changed.

[Spidey Freak]

15 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:

Eh, I always disagreed about Avatar. And the Minions themselves are at least a very memorable bit of pop culture lore.

 

For me, it's an intrinsic thing. Bar trivia is just a setting to be able to tell these things. Everybody knows Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump and Lion King and Titanic and all the lines and characters associated with them. Well, not everybody, obviously, but you know what I mean. They feel part of something bigger in our culture. We didn't create as many moments and memories like that in the 2010s - just rehashing the older moments. And that has a domino effect moving forward. Of course, it does take time to tell what the canon is, but idk, I  definitely remember everybody talking about Helm's Deep and Jack Sparrow at the time in a way they definitely aren't talking about any character or moments from the post 2015 blockbuster scene with a few exceptions like the Snap or BB-8.

 

Sounds a bit like nostalgia bias. In the last year alone people were (in order) singing that Peaches song, talking about "Canon events" from Spider-Verse, quoting the Barbie monologue to the point that it got the actress an Oscar nom, "Now I have become death itself" and of course obsessing over Saltburn and making Murder On The Dancefloor a resurgent hit on the charts.

 

I think we are the same age. I don't remember Sparrow or Helms Deep being bigger than Barbenheimer (and Ken)

Edited June 8 by Spidey Freak

[Speedorito]

6 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:

Eh, I always disagreed about Avatar. And the Minions themselves are at least a very memorable bit of pop culture lore.

 

For me, it's an intrinsic thing. Bar trivia is just a setting to be able to tell these things. Everybody knows Jurassic Park and Forrest Gump and Lion King and Titanic and all the lines and characters associated with them. Well, not everybody, obviously, but you know what I mean. They feel part of something bigger in our culture. We didn't create as many moments and memories like that in the 2010s - just rehashing the older moments. And that has a domino effect moving forward. Of course, it does take time to tell what the canon is, but idk, I  definitely remember everybody talking about Helm's Deep and Jack Sparrow at the time in a way they definitely aren't talking about any character or moments from the post 2015 blockbuster scene with a few exceptions like the Snap or BB-8.

I have wonder if it’s an age or generational thing because I don’t really know anyone who really knows or cares about some of those films deemed important or classics. Meanwhile stuff like “May the odds be ever in your favor” or “And I am Iron Man” mean a whole lot more. But like I said, it’s probably not the best metric.

 

But I think what other people said is true as well: culture is just a lot more fragmented than it used to be. Now there are a bunch of streaming services and social media. People are more likely to know a TikTok star than an indie actor in a critically acclaimed film. Some people can probably quote TikToks better than “culturally impactful” films.

[dallas]

4 minutes ago, Speedorito said:

I mean, it’s the same logic. Prices didn’t magically shoot up 2/3 of the way through 2023.

 

Honestly, I never heard the “It’s too expensive!” excuse actually taken seriously by some people until this May. I feel like there are better reasons to explain why the landscape has changed.

Public shifts like this can be very sudden at times. Price has been a problem for years, some realized it sooner than others, but we seem to be entering a point where the vast majority of moviegoers are realizing the cost of a trip to the theater, especially family trips. 

[Speedorito]

5 minutes ago, dallas said:

Public shifts like this can be very sudden at times. Price has been a problem for years, some realized it sooner than others, but we seem to be entering a point where the vast majority of moviegoers are realizing the cost of a trip to the theater, especially family trips. 

So what caused people to just magically decide that moviegoing was too expensive starting in August 2023? And why did no one realize it until The Fall Guy and Furiosa?

[TwoMisfits]

46 minutes ago, Firepower said:

That's why it doesn't explain what's happening this year, ticket prices were high for a while.

 

Well...

 

Fall of 2023, all student loans went back into repayment - if you want the big catalyst, that might be one.  Box office post summer 2023 has been poor.

 

But more generally, in an inflationary environment, you never know when folks hit "the cliff" til they do...it's the nature of that kinda inflationary environment that people try to spend their money to get experiences while they can b/c they know tomorrow it might get too expensive...and then one day, they can't do that anymore...

[Cmasterclay]

25 minutes ago, Spidey Freak said:

 

Sounds a bit like nostalgia bias. In the last year alone people were (in order) singing that Peaches song, talking about "Canon events" from Spider-Verse, quoting the Barbie monologue to the point that it got the actress an Oscar nom, "Now I have become death itself" and of course obsessing over Saltburn and making Murder On The Dancefloor a resurgent hit on the charts.

 

I think we are the same age. I don't remember Sparrow or Helms Deep being bigger than Barbenheimer (and Ken)

 

23 minutes ago, Speedorito said:

I have wonder if it’s an age or generational thing because I don’t really know anyone who really knows or cares about some of those films deemed important or classics. Meanwhile stuff like “May the odds be ever in your favor” or “And I am Iron Man” mean a whole lot more. But like I said, it’s probably not the best metric.

 

But I think what other people said is true as well: culture is just a lot more fragmented than it used to be. Now there are a bunch of streaming services and social media. People are more likely to know a TikTok star than an indie actor in a critically acclaimed film. Some people can probably quote TikToks better than “culturally impactful” films.

For what it's worth, I cited Hunger Games, Barbieheimer, and No Way Home as specific modern movies that I feel DID enter the cultural canon, so that's kind of exactly what I'm talking about. But I agree generally that some of this is generational/age. That said....one, ratings and sales for every industry are down, and the water cooler has been totally eliminated, like Grim said. So frankly, most discussions about the film industry are frankly pointless and irrelevant when NBA Finals ratings and theater tickets and video games are also in major trouble. But two, the 2010s were objectively a pretty abysmal decade for the film debut of lucrative IP to mine for a generation. Animation had some big new hits like Frozen and Moana, but live action it was all either debuting new superheroes like Deadpool or reviving dormant franchises like Godzilla and Jurassic World. The biggest new debuts on film that could reasonably be IP were Hunger Games (which peaked early), and I guess, uh, Quiet Place and John Wick? Not exactly the 2000s, when Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man, Shrek, Avatar, multiple Pixar franchises, POTC, and more made their film debuts. That's why we are debating a fucking Rush Hour 4 in this thread.

Edited June 8 by Cmasterclay

[TwoMisfits]

21 minutes ago, dallas said:

Public shifts like this can be very sudden at times. Price has been a problem for years, some realized it sooner than others, but we seem to be entering a point where the vast majority of moviegoers are realizing the cost of a trip to the theater, especially family trips. 

 

I admit, that my daughter wanted to see Garfield, but she has a summer program that she leaves for on Tuesday.  Since I could not make a discount Tuesday work (vacation for the other ones), and my other 3 kids were ambivalent, I passed.  Even at my discount theater with crappy seats, it's a minimum $10 ticket - and $60 was too much.  Cinemark would have been over $100, even without concessions.

 

If I'd have had a few $5 ticket offsets from TMobile or elsewhere, I'd have probably swung it...but as of now, I have Peacock, so we'll just watch it as a Halloween or Thanksgiving movie (if not before)...

[John Marston]

37 minutes ago, Speedorito said:

I mean, it’s the same logic. Prices didn’t magically shoot up 2/3 of the way through 2023.

 

Honestly, I never heard the “It’s too expensive!” excuse actually taken seriously by some people until this May. I feel like there are better reasons to explain why the landscape has changed.

 

it’s pretty crazy.

 

 

movies like GOtG 3, Across the Spider-Verse, Oppenheimer, Barbie, Mario m, Dune 2 etc all do really well and you even have several smaller hits like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Anyone But You, Songbirds and Snakes, Bob Marley etc  but when movies like The Marvels, The Fall Guy, Furiosa bomb suddenly it’s because “it is too expensive!”, “theaters are too dirty!”, “audiences are annoying!”. Even saw some people blaming “COVID fears”

Edited June 8 by John Marston

[ChipDerby]

42 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:

 

. Of course, it does take time to tell what the canon is, but idk, I  definitely remember everybody talking about Helm's Deep and Jack Sparrow at the time in a way they definitely aren't talking about any character or moments from the post 2015 blockbuster scene with a few exceptions like the Snap or BB-8.

 

I think this thinking is wild. So you name two moments and say "see this is what we're missing!" And then say the moments you remember from recent times are "exceptions"??? The heck? Lmao 

[Cmasterclay]

I think people should read one of the many focus groups of the median American voter and see the somewhat mindblowing things all of them say about their perceptions of the economy and their own personal financial situation. It is absolutely, 100 percent possible that Americans are caught up in a snowballing narrative about things like movies being too expensive that accelerates every month including since last fall. Yes, I believe that more people believe movies are more expensive than last August with 100 percent certainty, even if it doesn't seem logical. 

[VanillaSkies]

I hate to be a broken record, but what else happened starting August 2023? A huge strike that pushed back releases for a ton of movies which we are still recovering from today. There are a lot of different factors that have contributed to the box office slide in the last year. Like, when was the last time we had just one Marvel movie in a calendar year?

 

We need to give it another year or so to see how the chips fall. As is, this Fall and 2025 look very strong. If they perform as expected, then all this handwringing was for nothing. 

[Cmasterclay]

16 minutes ago, ChipDerby said:

 

I think this thinking is wild. So you name two moments and say "see this is what we're missing!" And then say the moments you remember from recent times are "exceptions"??? The heck? Lmao 

Eh, to me it's a product of content siloing more than nostalgia. It's like saying that more of my friends were talking about the NBA Finals virtually every year of my life than they are about this one - no texts about the games, no discourse, etc. Everyone's just in their own little bubble now, and I think the water cooler of cultural canon is pretty much only the NFL and a few things that breakthrough on occasion. So yeah, I do think everything is exceptions now - not just movie shit, but all shit.

[Flopped]

The consistency of Bad Boys is wild. Turns 30 next year. Doesn't get enough credit for its longevity. 

[dallas]

43 minutes ago, Speedorito said:

So what caused people to just magically decide that moviegoing was too expensive starting in August 2023? And why did no one realize it until The Fall Guy and Furiosa?

Probably Barbenheimer lol. A lot of people did double features with friends or family and realized how expensive it was when they were out a shit ton of money for two films. People did realize this, mind you, but I imagine many were too busy coping to see what was actually happening.