Top 10 Grossing Films of 2016 Were All...

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AndyDursin
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Top 10 Grossing Films of 2016 Were All...

#1 Post by AndyDursin »

Every Top 10 grossing film in 2016 was either a sequel, a spinoff, a superhero movie, a reboot or a toon...or a combination there of.
Courtesy @ERCboxoffice

This is why overall attendance continues to fall off...

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AndyDursin
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Re: Top 10 Grossing Films of 2016 Were All...

#2 Post by AndyDursin »

More depressing is this:

Over the last decade only two original movies have been #1 worldwide: 2013's FROZEN ($1.2B) and 2009's AVATAR ($2.7B).

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Top 10 Grossing Films of 2016 Were All...

#3 Post by Monterey Jack »

AndyDursin wrote:More depressing is this:

Over the last decade only two original movies have been #1 worldwide: 2013's FROZEN ($1.2B) and 2009's AVATAR ($2.7B).
And both of those are getting sequels...FOUR FREAKING SEQUELS in Avatar's case. :?

Remember the days when a hit movie didn't ALWAYS get a sequel? Nowadays even modest grossers like Now You See Me and Snow White & The Huntsman get sequelized, to negligible effect at the box office. If E.T. were released in 2012 instead of 1982, we'd be up to the third installment now.

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Re: Top 10 Grossing Films of 2016 Were All...

#4 Post by AndyDursin »

Yep. What's happening is these franchises just continue to produce a constant stream of revenue for mega corps like Disney, and it's predictable cash they can bank on.

ROGUE ONE isn't going to do even half of THE FORCE AWAKENS domestically, and it's playing against absolutely nothing, so its in-take isn't even that impressive (there were some people saying it was doing $600 mil domestic; it's probably not going to do $450 mil domestic)...yet it's still another chunk Disney can add to their accounts regardless.

The number of tickets it's selling, however, is a fraction of what E.T. once did, even if it passed it in the unadjusted box-office figures (which are worthless when comparing movies of today with movies that opened when tickets were $4).

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Monterey Jack
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Re: Top 10 Grossing Films of 2016 Were All...

#5 Post by Monterey Jack »

AndyDursin wrote: The number of tickets it's selling, however, is a fraction of what E.T. once did, even if it passed it in the unadjusted box-office figures (which are worthless when comparing movies of today with movies that opened when tickets were $4).
I remember Entertainment Weekly doing an issue once in the mid-90's about the 100 most popular films of all time...which they determined not by the box office take, but by how many tickets they sold (and they threw in VHS video rentals, as well), which, to me, is the real determination of how popular a film is. It kind of blows my mind going back thirty years or so and looking up what the top-ten highest grossing films of that particular year were...and maybe two or three of them made more than $100 million. Nowadays if a film doesn't pull in $100 million in its opening weekend, it's considered a colossal flop. :? But, then again, thirty years ago movie tickets cost a third of what they are today, and movie budgets were likewise a fraction of what they are now. I remember being awed when I read that Tim Burton's Batman cost $45 million in 1989, but nowadays that won't even cover the cost of a romantic comedy, let alone a splashy summer action movie. Hell, Disney probably blew $45 million on Robert Downey Jr.'s paycheck alone for the last Captain America.

And does all of this conspicuous consumption make for better movies? Not at all. I felt far more anguish as a kid watching Superman losing Lois Lane in that earthquake and turn back the world to undo that event than I did watching him knock over two dozen skyscrapers in Man Of Steel. Losing one character we know and care about is far more meaningful than seeing thousands of faceless extras scurrying about in the background as buildings topple and explode all around them. At least with a movie like Titanic, we spent two hours getting to know many of the historical figures aboard that doomed ship, so when it started going down, there was a potent human element that pulsated beneath the technical logistics of the production, so that, even amidst the spectacular visual effects, you actually gave a crap about what was going on. But nowadays, we see a movie like Batman V Superman, where the happenstance of Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent's mothers both having the same name is what passes for actual character development. :oops:

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