After ‘Fall Guy’ flop, Hollywood braces for uncertain summer

A year after the cultural frenzy of “Barbenheimer,” which brought in hundreds of millions of dollars for Hollywood, the movie-making business is heading into summer, with no clear blockbuster on the horizon and questions about the future of movie theaters lingering. .

For many box office watchers, Universal’s “The Fall Guy” is the potential boost needed to bring moviegoers back to theaters and start what studios hope will be a profitable summer. It was seen as a drug.

But the action-romantic film’s poor opening weekend box office results left film industry experts still reeling from the ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic and labor issues that have put some major projects on hold. For the film industry, which is in the midst of a crisis, such a fiasco is another warning sign.

“After the pandemic and the strikes, the movie industry hasn’t been able to catch its breath,” said Sean Robbins, a film consultant and box office analyst. “‘Fall Guy’ had to shoulder the burden of being a big summer opener, but the effects of that delay are still coming to an end.”

The blockbuster hits of Warner Bros.’ Barbie and Universal’s Oppenheimer last summer were celebrated by many across the industry as a necessary anecdote to a years-long trend of declining theater attendance.

Global box office revenue is estimated to increase more than 30% year-on-year in 2023, but that number remains double digits short of the pre-pandemic attendance numbers of the past three years, Deadline said. report.

“The remarkable success of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ was due in large part to timing. Both films were released in the heat of marketing, with all press completed before the impending actors’ strike.” “Necessity has added to the urgency.” Friday, film critic Catherine Chauard said.

Thanks to Full Court’s successful press marketing, both films grossed a combined $235 million in their opening weekend, and last summer’s global box office gross was estimated at more than $2 billion.

Last fall, the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists reached new contracts with studios after a six-month strike, the first since the 1960s.

Officials say the debacle of “The Fall Guy” has further dampened expectations from analysts’ already pessimistic predictions that domestic summer ticket sales will decline by 25% compared to a year ago. It is pointed out that there are.

“This summer, we’re probably going to see more movies that do somewhere in between, rather than having a top-tier $600 million movie and a $400 million movie opening at the same time,” Robbins said. explained.

“Fall Guy” was expected to gross around $40 million in its opening weekend, The Guardian reported. reportbut fell short of its goal, earning less than $30 million.

Things are getting complicated for Hollywood’s traditional big brands like Warner Bros. And Universal continues to push its high-quality home streaming service as it hopes to entice audiences to invest time and money in theaters this summer.

The trend towards streaming is not new. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, streaming services around the world surpassed 1 billion subscribers for the first time in 2020, and in the U.S. alone, the number of subscribers soared by one-third that year.

But industry insiders say recent box office struggles further highlight a saturated market increasingly dominated by tech companies with big balance sheets.

Amazon and Apple have entered the movie-making business in a big way, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in films such as “Flowers of a Killer Moon” and “Creed III.”

Disney management recently announced it would shift its focus to movies in favor of quality over quantity, but hopes next summer’s Marvel movie “Deadpool & Wolverine” will give the streamer a boost at the box office. ing.

More optimistic observers and critics argue that the success of films like Dune Part 2 suggests that there is still some demand for watching movies, especially on premium screens like IMAX. I am.

A weak start to the year puts even more pressure on major animated films scheduled for release this year, including Columbia Pictures’ Garfield, Disney’s Inside Head 2 and Universal’s Despicable Me 4. Dew.

Other films that filmmakers hope will help limit the expected decline in profits this year include “Planet of the Apes,” which opens this weekend. Next week, the Mad Max prequel “Furiosa” will be released, followed by Kevin Costner’s Civil War-era Western “Horizon: An American Saga” in June.

Still, the overall stakes for filmmakers this year are almost certainly smaller than the cash cow that accompanied last year’s “Babenheimer” phenomenon.

“If you look at the summer release calendar, you don’t see any guaranteed box office home runs,” said Steve Granelli, a professor of film and pop culture at Northeastern University. “This is pretty indicative of the overall health of the industry.”

It’s possible that one or more high-profile movies could be a huge success, which would be surprising for an industry that is targeting less than $3 billion in theatrical revenue this summer, analysts say.

“It’s all relative, and the industry has seen this coming for a long time,” Robbins said. “Companies have always had to plan eight to 15 months ahead. We now seem to be at a stage where that is acceptable and business-wise we are looking ahead to the second half of this year, when things may improve. It seems to be leaning.”