Hollywood Sucking, Like It Does

Surprising no one who's caught a flick in the last few years, Hollywood being sucktastic is reaching new depths:

if things continue as they have, this will be the lowest box office in a quarter century. While there have been bright spots and surprises (“Baby Driver”) the failures have outweighed everything. 

Start with a total write off on “King Arthur” and go from there. Then go to “The Dark Tower.”
One terrible new failure: “Nut Job 2,” they say, is the biggest loser ever in  wide release (4000+) studio movie. It made just over $8 million this weekend. {That'd be an average of 13 - THIRTEEN - ticket-buyers or so per show, times 15 shows in a three-day period, for theatres that hold 300-400 or so. -A.}

Four years ago, at a USC symposium, famed and very successful directors George Lucas and Steven Spielberg warned the film industry that reliance on blockbusters– tent pole movies that failed would cause an implosion. At first no one took them seriously. But now maybe we’re seeing what they meant. 

Spielberg said at the time: “That’s the big danger, and there’s eventually going to be an implosion — or a big meltdown. There’s going to be an implosion where three or four or maybe even a half-dozen mega budget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.” 

Other huge flops this year include “Life” — the sci fi movie no one saw, “Monster Trucks,” which was a monster disaster. “Ghost in the Shell” with Scarlett Johansson also came and went quickly. Plus Will Ferrell’s “The Office” was a total write off, and Sony’s “Rough Night” was an embarrassment. 

I’m not counting the $100 million plus lost on “The Promise,” because it was a vanity production. 

This year also brought Tom Hanks’s biggest flop in decades, “The Circle.” And of course there were the two misbegotten TV remakes– “Baywatch” and “CHiPs.” 

Even blockbusters that seemed like hits weren’t. “Transformers 5” was so bad that critics wondered why it was made. “The Mummy” also reeked of failure and desperation. 

Studios keep counting on international sales to bail them out. And it works a lot of the time. But continuing to send bad product from the US will eventually take its toll.

Anyone hoping or praying for a major studio to go tits-up can cool their jets. Nobody's gotten it that wrong since MGM died in the 1970s. But eventually, CFOs tell CEOs that making craptastic plotless rehashes, re-shooting classics because they're scared shitless of new ideas, and trying to turn crappy comic books and TV shows into big-deal movies, isn't working anymore.

Especially true when every fetid pile takes a big, fat, runny crap on the heads of most of America with every other line and visual, not to mention a conga line of talentless no-class baboons spewing their retarded pronouncements on traditional folks every time some breathless twit sticks a microphone in their face, or interviews them for another fawning puff piece in MeMeMe Moviestar News, and then shares their twaddle with people who work for an average income. Which audience will, and has, paid those retarded producers and actors back by staying home in the millions, with no end in sight.

No points for guessing how that formula is working out for TV and cable, either.

Couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of talentless Left-wing hacks.

"If you want to send a message, call Western Union."
If you want an audience, stop crapping on them, find a good story, and tell it well.
The box office will take care of itself at that point.