Hollywood Is In A Record-Setting Box Office Slump

You might not have noticed it, if you have attended movie screenings on opening weekend and muscled through packed houses to find great seats in your neighborhood multiplex, but Hollywood is in the midst of a record-setting slump.

No film released this season has crossed the $300 million mark at the domestic box office.

Only one film – Michael Bay’s “Transformers: Age of Extinction” – reported an opening weekend north of $100 million. And almost every movie that has opened big has struggled to sustain that momentum.

These are dire times at the domestic box, and THR thinks they know a few of the reasons.

The trade posted sobering statistics about the struggling box office this summer, reporting that the season “is expected to finish down 15 to 20 percent compared with 2013, the worst year-over-year decline in three decades, and revenue will struggle to crack $4 billion, which hasn’t happened in eight years.”

If you think that sounds terrible… you are right. Analysts predict that the full year “is facing a deficit of 4 to 5 percent.” International numbers are helping to pick up the slack, but they aren’t helping nearly as much as studios had hoped.

Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal admits, “I would have liked “Amazing Spider-Man 2” to make a lot more money for us than it did, but it made a lot of money for us anyway.”

So why are numbers down? THR floats a few theories, most of which make a ton of sense. For starters, it is suggested that young men – normally the driving force at the box office – aren’t responding at the ticket window the way they used to.

“Young men haven’t been as enthusiastic as usual,” analyst Phil Contrino tells the trade. “Maybe studios shouldn’t just go after this demo when building their summer tentpoles.”