{"id":5171,"date":"2025-09-09T14:16:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T14:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/5171\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T14:16:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T14:16:08","slug":"cracks-in-hollywoods-box-office-armor-lessons-from-another-summer-bummer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/5171\/","title":{"rendered":"Cracks in Hollywood’s box office armor: Lessons from another summer bummer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThe Conjuring: Last Rites\u201d gave movie theaters a needed jolt<\/a> over the weekend with a much better than expected domestic opening of $84 million and a global take of $194 million, a franchise best and the latest success for Warner Bros. and its New Line Cinema banner.<\/p>\n

But it will take more than supernatural scares to ease Hollywood\u2019s jitters after a weak summer movie season that exposed more challenges facing the traditional film industry.<\/p>\n

Ticket sales fell slightly from last year\u2019s summer season, which for the movie business spans from the first weekend of May through Labor Day. Movies grossed $3.67 billion<\/a> in the U.S. and Canada this summer, down 0.2% from the same period in 2024, according to data from Comscore. More importantly, it\u2019s still down from the pre-pandemic norm of about $4 billion, a disappointing result given that summer typically accounts for about 40% of annual grosses.<\/p>\n

If you account for inflation, it\u2019s even worse. Adjusting for today\u2019s dollars, summer revenue was down 34% from 2019, meaning theater attendance was weaker<\/a> than the topline revenue stats suggest. With actual attendance still impaired compared with the days before COVID-19, there\u2019s a growing sense that the industry\u2019s fears have come true: Audience habits have changed, and they\u2019re not going back.<\/p>\n

The problem wasn\u2019t a lack of movies compared with last year. The effects of the 2023 writers\u2019 and actors\u2019 strikes have dissipated by now.<\/p>\n

Rather, the issue was a shortage of big studio movies that audiences really wanted to see. The biggest release was Disney\u2019s \u201cLilo & Stitch\u201d remake, which collected $424 million domestically. There was nothing like last summer\u2019s \u201cInside Out 2\u201d or \u201cDeadpool & Wolverine,\u201d which both generated more than $600 million in North America.<\/p>\n

The problem of the shrinking overall audience could be due to multiple factors.<\/p>\n

In particular, theater owners blame the shrinking of the theatrical window \u2014 the period of time a new movie is held back from home video after its big screen debut \u2014 to roughly 45 days from the previously standard 90 days. Audiences know they don\u2019t have to wait long before a new movie becomes available in their living room. That encourages them to save their money for only the biggest, Imax-worthy spectacles. The growing influence of Imax and premium large format screening may exacerbate that trend, as audiences choose between paying extra for a better \u201cexperience,\u201d or just waiting to see \u201cF1 The Movie\u201d on their couch. <\/p>\n

There were plenty of sequels and reboots, but those often performed worse than prior installments, indicating that audiences were less enthusiastic about seeing another Marvel movie or rampaging dino feature. \u201cJurassic World: Rebirth\u201d made $861 million globally, which was big, but still the series\u2019 smallest outing since 2001\u2019s \u201cJurassic Park III.\u201d Warner Bros.\u2019 \u201cSuperman\u201d collected a healthy $614 million, but that was still less than 2013\u2019s \u201cMan of Steel\u201d ($670 million).<\/p>\n

Superheroes didn\u2019t come flying to the rescue. Marvel\u2019s \u201cThunderbolts\u201d put up a modest $382 million while \u201cThe Fantastic Four: First Steps\u201d opened strong but collapsed in subsequent weeks for a total of $511 million worldwide, a middling outcome for the Disney-owned comic book universe. No wonder studios are increasingly looking at video games<\/a> as a source of intellectual property for movie adaptations, as my colleague Sam Masunaga recently wrote. After all, Generation Alpha\u2019s list of favorite franchises is dominated by video game-related titles, according to a recent National Research Group report<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Another threat emerged as international audiences appeared to sour on some U.S. blockbusters. \u201cSuperman\u201d and \u201cFantastic Four\u201d grossed less abroad than they did at home, which is an unusual result for big-budget action flicks.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear why, but some explanations have been floated. China is no longer the reliable source of revenue that it once was, as audiences increasingly favor local-language productions. Some speculate that America\u2019s diminished standing abroad has contributed to audience fatigue. The quintessential Americanness of the Superman brand is also widely believed to be a factor in that film\u2019s underperformance outside the U.S.<\/p>\n

Original animation struggled, as Pixar fielded its worst opening weekend ever with \u201cElio.\u201d To add insult to injury, Sony Pictures Animation\u2019s \u201cKPop Demon Hunters\u201d became a cultural phenomenon, but only after first launching on Netflix.<\/p>\n

The rest of the year has some major releases, but they\u2019re not expected to bring the business back to full strength. September is usually a slow month for moviegoing, \u201cLast Rites\u201d notwithstanding. Disney\u2019s \u201cZootopia 2,\u201d Universal\u2019s \u201cWicked: For Good\u201d and James Cameron\u2019s \u201cAvatar: Fire and Ash\u201d will probably do huge business. But while individual films can do well, the overall picture isn\u2019t so rosy.<\/p>\n

Newsletter <\/p>\n

You\u2019re reading the Wide Shot<\/p>\n

Ryan Faughnder delivers the latest news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production \u2014 and what it all means for the future.<\/p>\n

Enter email address <\/p>\n

Sign Me Up <\/p>\n

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. <\/p>\n

Stuff we wroteNumber of the week \"one <\/p>\n

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of illegally using written work to train its chatbot Claude.<\/p>\n

The topline figure is the largest known settlement for a copyright case, equating to $3,000 per work for an estimated 500,000 books, The Times\u2019 Queenie Wong reported<\/a>. <\/p>\n

But the case was not an outright win for authors worried about AI being trained on their published material. Far from it. <\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco ruled in June that Anthropic\u2019s use of the books to train the AI models constituted \u201cfair use,\u201d meaning it wasn\u2019t illegal. Fair use is a doctrine that allows for the limited use of copyrighted materials without permission in certain cases, such as teaching, criticism and news reporting. It\u2019s an essential part of AI companies\u2019 defense against copyright infringement claims. <\/p>\n

The real problem for Anthropic was that the startup had illegally downloaded millions of books through online libraries. So the piracy was the true sin in this case, not the training of AI on books without permission. <\/p>\n

Anthropic pirated at least 7 million books from Books3, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, online libraries containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted books, to train its software, according to the judge. However, it also bought millions of print copies in bulk and scanned them into digital and machine-readable forms, which Alsup found to be in the bounds of fair use.<\/p>\n

Film shoots Finally …<\/p>\n

Listen: Zach Top\u2019s<\/a> \u201cAin\u2019t in It for My Health,\u201d for throwback country goodness. <\/p>\n

Read: Amy Nicholson\u2019s review<\/a> of \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d at Sphere in Las Vegas. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Conjuring: Last Rites\u201d gave movie theaters a needed jolt over the weekend with a much better than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6382,6380,1259,1128,4550,146,85,46,6376,2079,6378,400,6383,4985,6384,6379,6377,6381,2709],"class_list":["post-5171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-beatles","tag-bob-chapek","tag-company","tag-coronavirus","tag-disney","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-marvel","tag-moviepass","tag-netflix","tag-new-contract","tag-pandemic","tag-photo-illustration","tag-service","tag-star-wars","tag-union","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}