Annapurna and United Artists Releasing

Domestic box office has amassed $5.702 billion this year thus far, which is down 9% from last year’s $6.287 billion end-of-June cume. A $585 million deficit isn’t the end of the world. Heck, 49% of that ($287 million) is just the difference between Black Panther ($700 million), Avengers: Infinity War ($673 million at this point in its run) and Incredibles 2 ($440 million by July 1) versus Captain Marvel ($426 million), Avengers: Endgame ($844 million) and Toy Story 4 ($256 million). Moreover, sometimes it can be a matter of a few biggies getting delayed. Fifty Shades of Grey, The Good Dinosaur and Furious 7 being delayed from summer 2014 to 2015 created a vacuum for essentially the entire year.

But this year, unlike 2014′s “slump,” it’s not a vacuum created by high profile delays or a smaller overall cume. It’s the individual “big” films (Godzilla: King of the Monsters) which are struggling (Dark Phoenix) on a movie (Secret Life of Pets 2) by movie (Men In Black: International) basis. More importantly, it’s a matter of audiences completely ignoring the kind of old-school, adult-skewing “movie-movies” they claim to crave in favor of those underwhelming sequels and reboots. In terms of dollar-to-dollar comparisons, audiences are vastly more likely to see the very films that are being blamed for the box office blues, which means, relatively speaking, they are both influencing the kind of movies Hollywood prioritizes and having a bad time at the movies.

Allow me to make a recommendation of a recent theatrical release: It stars Emma Thompson as a prickly big boss who reluctantly agrees to hire a young woman of color named Molly who gained access through trickery and deceit. Even though Molly has no relevant experience, she believes herself uncommonly qualified, both because of her layperson study of the craft in question and her complete lack of attachments to the outside world. The two of them bond over the challenges of being women in a male-dominated field, and Molly eventually proves her worth to both the boss and to the organization in question. Pop quiz: Am I talking about Mindy Kaling’s Late Night or Tessa Thompson’s Men in Black International?

One of these films isn’t very good, as it prioritizes arbitrary plot over character, refuses to be about anything and feels hashed out in the editing room. The other is a well-made and thoughtful character comedy that has a lot on its mind and gives its characters plenty of room to talk about their feelings and their beliefs. Men in Black International will be lucky to earn back 2.5x its $110 million, while Late Night is a disaster (thanks to a $30 million-plus marketing spend) at $15 million worldwide. Nonetheless, 7.337 million domestic moviegoers bought tickets to the “bad” movie while just 1.466 million people bought tickets to the “good” movie.

There are plenty of good and/or interesting movies released week in and week out in both wide release and limited release. But if audiences make the choice to see only the designated event movie/franchise flicks which turn out to not be very good, then theatrical movie going will be seen as a lesser form of filmed entertainment. If the majority of theatrical moviegoers only go to the movies for “big” movies that turn out to be lousy, then that’s how Hollywood will be defined as Netflix and Hulu will be the place for high-quality, character-driven, diverse, star-driven adult entertainment. To be fair, Hollywood mostly has itself to blame.

They spent 15-to-20 years conditioning moviegoers to mostly consider movie theaters for the biggest of big franchise fare, a drive that was doubled in the wake of The Avengers and its $1.519 billion global gross in 2012. The MCU superhero movie sent the industry obsessively trying to turn any and all of their IP into cinematic universes under the wrongheaded and doomed presumption that a cinematic universe was itself an appealing element element to moviegoers. They eventually kicked that addiction, but by the time Solo, Justice League and The Mummy showed how wrongheaded it was, it was too late. Audiences had found alternate at-home/mobile options for their “just a movie” entertainment needs.

They also tried to rush the death of physical media in order to get everyone on the streaming train and thus cut down on costs related to DVD production. The DVD boom created a glorious moment where audiences would gladly shell out $10 for a movie ticket and then, months later $15-$20 for a DVD of that same movie. Audiences are now used to having a given film available either for online rental for as little as $4 or “for free” on Amazon Prime, Netflix and/or Hulu less than a year after theatrical release. When the accepted price for entertainment is “free,” it’s that much harder to convince people to pay $10-15 for a movie ticket.

Hollywood got caught flat-footed when audiences got tired on “IP exploitation for the sake of IP exploitation” flicks while at-home options started offering content on par with Hollywood’s non-tentpole fare. Netflix and its ilk filled in the gap with (quality varying) character-driven comedies, dramas and melodramas that didn’t need to appeal to everyone and barely needed actual viewership since the goal was in boosting subscriptions. This partially explains the doomed runs of Open Road, Broad Green Pictures and the many small distributors that popped up in the early 2010′s to provide studio programmers in between the tent poles. Unlike Netflix, Clarious Entertainment couldn’t survive on reruns of The Office or Friends.

Hollywood also was ridiculously slow to catch on to the financial value of diverse/inclusive popcorn entertainment. They were desperately afraid that “casting Mohammed so and so” would scare away overseas box office, and they spent decades trying to turn every vaguely talented and handsome white guy into the next Tom Cruise even as Will Smith was knocking out global smash hit after smash hit. In a totally unrelated digression, Walt Disney’s Aladdin, starring Mena Massoud and Will Smith, should be passing $900 million sometime this weekend. But even Aladdin is both a solution and a symptom of a problem. Representation only matters for big movies that audiences already wanted to see.

Audiences will show up (and the media will trumpet) big movies that are essentially “Diversity: The Movie” (Black Panther or Crazy Rich Asians) but will ignore or belittle a random genre flick (Pacific Rim: Uprising, The Spy Who Dumped Me, The Darkest Minds, etc.) that just happens to star and/or be written/directed by men and women of color. We’d rather fancast a female 007 than see Atomic Blonde. It’s not that audiences would rather see Avengers: Endgame as opposed to Booksmart. The audiences that once ignored the tentpoles (or saw all sorts of movies alongside the biggies in theaters) has now stay home for cheaper, more convenient and more varied at-home streaming/VOD entertainment outlets.

Sometimes it is a matter of the product being offered. When your big theatrical offerings in a given week are Dark Phoenix and The Secret Life of Pets 2, theatrical Hollywood can’t necessarily be accused of putting its best foot forward in a time when theatrical movie going is just one of many options. Folks don’t have to go to the movies just to have something to see anymore, so if the product isn’t there, they look elsewhere. But what we’ve created is a vicious cycle. The moviegoers who are still going to the movies are flocking, comparatively, to the sequels, remakes and reboots, be they good or bad, and willfully ignoring the other (and often superior) theatrical content.

This is furthering the notion that a night at the movies is likely to be a disappointment. I’m not talking about being unwilling to drive out of the way to catch High Life or Fast Color. But when movies like Long Shot, Booksmart, The Dead Don’t Die and Late Night are indeed playing at a theater near you, well, there has to be some responsibility on the part of theatergoers to make better choices. It should be the theaters’ prime concern, as even the studios begin to emphasize subscription-based streaming services, to convince more people to see more “good” (or at least non-franchise-specific) movies in theaters along with the (sometimes quite good) superhero movies, horror flicks and animated sequels.

The problem for theaters isn’t just that mediocre sequels are under-performing, it’s that the non-event movies, some of which are quite good, are performing worse than ever. Even as the sequels stumble, a whiff like Dark Phoenix is still selling many times more tickets than the likes of Booksmart or Long Shot, meaning that the majority of folks choosing to see a movie in theaters are thus likely to have a bad time. If that doesn’t change, if audiences don’t become at least a little more willing to see Late Night instead (or alongside) Men In Black: International, then Hollywood’s theatrical reputation for being essentially a glossy cover band of yesterday’s box office glories will become downright factual.

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