A few weeks ago, reports were circling that Hollywood was facing a problem. The US box office had had its worst summer for over a decade, and were it not for the emergence of the Chinese market as an outlet for American films (which we wrote about a short while ago), then studios would be facing some very difficult decisions.

To a degree, they probably already are.

But then, we’ve been here before. And as bizarre as it may seem, given the fact that it housed some huge films, 1991 was the year that left many studio executives staring into the proverbial abyss. Box office was down, DVD was still some way away, and after a decade of recession-proof growth, 1991’s US box office collapsed.

It’s worth putting in context that this was at a point where the US was the most crucial market for Hollywood’s output, responsible for most of the studios’ takings. So it would be no exaggeration to say that there were a lot of worried rich people when 1991’s summer box office, for instance, dropped 11% on 1990’s numbers. Furthermore, admissions in August and September 1991 were the worst they’d been since 1978. Hollywood was in trouble, and many were pinning their hopes on Steven Spielberg’s Hook, arriving at the end of the year, to give the business a shot in the arm. We’ll come to that shortly.