Universal Pictures’ gangsta rap biopic, Straight Outta Compton, surpassed expectations last weekend with a massive $60.2m domestic debut. The opening marked another win for the Hollywood studio in a historic year for the company.

Universal has had an impressive run this summer, notching close to $6bn so far this year (in July, the studio hit the $5bn mark in global box office faster than any studio has), thanks to the dinosaur-sized successes of Jurassic World (now the third-highest grossing movie of all time) and Furious 7 (the fifth-biggest movie ever), plus Minions, Pitch Perfect 2, Trainwreck and Straight Outta Compton.

Overall, the summer’s been fairly kind to Hollywood studios, with Avengers: Age of Ultron, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation and San Andreas all earning healthy returns. There were some blockbuster-sized duds as there are every year - Fantastic Four, in particular, bombed horribly - but as USA Today reports, 2015’s summer total will finish up 8.4% from 2014, and will tie with 2011 for the second-biggest in history, if estimates hold.

Unfortunately, the success of this season’s biggest studio offerings seems to have negatively impacted the smaller, largely independently funded movies that opened during the same summer window.

While overall box office revenue is up from last year, the independent films that were expected to perform this summer, didn’t. It resulted in a summer without a true low-budget breakout, like last year’s Boyhood, which opened in July , and went on to gross more than $25m on a budget of just $4m, before going on to become an awards juggernaut.

Cash Money: Boyhood was a breakout hit in 2014 Photograph: Matt Lankes/Allstar/Universal Pictures

Like the bulk of the indies that open during the summer season, Boyhood got its start in January at the Sundance film festival, where early glowing reviews got moviegoers buzzing about the release months before it even opened. Its successful release strategy mirrored that of Beasts of the Southern Wild, which premiered at Sundance in 2012, and opened months later to a final rousing tune of $12.8m.

This year’s major Sundance breakout was no doubt Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Alfonso Gomez Rejon’s teen dramedy that wowed critics, and won both the festival’s grand jury prize and audience award – Whiplash pulled off the same feat the year before. After getting a unique high-seven figure deal with Fox Searchlight, Me and Earl was expected to hit big when it opened in June – except it didn’t. To date, the $8m production has failed to break even, only grossing $6.6m in the US.

Me and Earl isn’t this year’s only Sundance casualty. Dope, another festival favorite that earned strong reviews, likewise flamed out this summer. At $16.7m, the comedy earned significantly more at the domestic box office than Me and Earl, but unlike that movie, Dope received a nationwide rollout from Open Road Films – meaning it was expected to make that amount in its first week or two of release. Instead, it opened to a dismal $6m weekend, coming in fifth place the week of its release in late June.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl, arguably the best reviewed film to premiere at Sundance this year, unfortunately appears to be suffering a similar fate. Following its weak opening weekend in early August, Tom Brueggemann, a veteran specialized film buyer and box office expert for Thompson on Hollywood/Indiewire, predicted the coming of age movie would only go on to gross $2m – in the long run.

In its analysis of why the youth-skewing movies failed to connect with moviegoers, the Hollywood Reporter suggests that core audience for both films – teens – were too “occupied by blockbuster commercial fare this summer (Jurassic World, for example)”.

More and more the theaters that play specialized films, now play commercial films too because they need to survive Tom Brueggemann

Indeed, the only indies to have made healthy profits this summer were targeted to older audiences, and oddly enough, only one of them premiered at Sundance.

Following a mid-July launch, Mr Holmes, starring Ian McKellen as an ageing Sherlock Holmes, has performed well for Roadside Attractions, earning over $14m to date. Likewise the company’s Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy did solidly, earning around the same amount since opening in June. The same goes for Fox Searchlight’s period romance Far From the Madding Crowd, which opened in May. And while Sundance debut I’ll See You in My Dreams – a drama about a widow finding love at an older age – made significantly less than the aforementioned dramas, its $7.3m gross is impressive considering its lack of a major star, and very low budget.

Woody Allen’s Irrational Man did not lure audiences this summer Photograph: Sabrina Lantos/Allstar/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Oddly enough, the one film that was all-but expected to be a hit with older audiences this summer instead flopped. Woody Allen can usually be counted on to get the over-50 set out of their air conditioned homes and into the arthouses. Over the past several years, he’s released a film every summer, and the rapid-fire pace has paid off: Midnight in Paris, To Rome With Love, Blue Jasmine, and Magic in the Moonlight all served as strong counter-programming to the glut of summer blockbusters, and made a lot of money as a result. (Midnight in Paris, especially – it earned a whopping $56.8m in the summer of 2011).

This summer’s Allen offering, Irrational Man, was a dud with critics, but bad reviews didn’t affect the success of Magic in the Moonlight, which did decently in 2014, earning $10.5m. Irrational Man stands no shot at matching that film’s moderate success. Since opening in July, the dark comedy has brought in only $3m.

“This has been a problematic summer, but I wouldn’t call it a dire summer,” Brueggemann told the Guardian. “There’ve been some films that have performed less than expected. It just may be that this year’s crop of Sundance films didn’t have the same appeal.”

Brueggemann also suggested that the strength of this summer’s female and/or critic orientated studio fare – Spy, Trainwreck, Mad Max: Fury Road, and Inside Out were all female-led movies that received strong reviews – took away from the specialized audiences to a certain extent, citing a “cause and effect reaction”.

“More and more the theaters that play specialized films, now play commercial films too because they need to survive,” he added. “That not only means [indies] are competing in the marketplace, they’re now competing in the same theaters.”

However, Brueggemann stressed: “it would have to be a disastrous rest of the year to suggest that we might be at the death knell of specialized film in theaters.”

Thankfully, that doesn’t appear that will be the case. The fall moviegoing season is when independent distributors typically release their hopeful awards contenders, and this year proves no different. Todd Haynes’ lesbian period romance Carol, which was a hit with critics at Cannes, is sure to also win over audiences when the Weinstein Company opens it in November.

Other low-budget potential Oscar players expected to perform well include Tom Hooper’s The Danish Girl, starring recent Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne as the first known person to undergo gender reassignment surgery; Freeheld, which stars Julianne Moore as a woman who fought to have her pension benefit left to her domestic partner (played by Ellen Page); Don Cheadle’s directorial debut Miles Ahead, in which he plays jazz legend Miles Davis; and the period immigration drama Brooklyn, which drew raves at Sundance for Saoirse Ronan’s performance.

Based on the lackluster arthouse summer, Brueggemann said he senses “concern, not panic” among industry types. He, for one, remains hopeful: “It’s nothing that a strong set of strong fall and Christmas pictures can’t reverse.”