Attendance the root of box office woes

Writer and actor strikes justifiably take a hefty portion of oxygen in the Hollywood-centric news cycle, but entertainment writers across the country also love talking about box office bombs.

Many, many news outlets were eager to report on “disappointing” box office results. Movies like “The Flash,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Elemental, “Fast X” and “Mission: Impossible Part 1: Dead Reckoning” all debuted with box office returns that certainly resembled the financials of blockbusters from a bygone era.

These outlets have also been quick to provide context to those numbers, specifically how all these movies cost ridiculous amounts of money to produce… too much money, in fact, for their distributors to recover from the film’s theatrical runs.

“Indiana Jones,” “Fast X” and “Mission: Impossible” all apparently cost about $300 million each to produce. Add in marketing costs and the fact that theaters take a percentage of ticket sales, and these movies all need at least double their production costs in box office returns to turn a potential profit.

So many think pieces on the subject, and yet, the answer is relatively simple: Fewer people go to see movies in theaters, and they aren’t coming back anytime soon.

For one, studios can no longer rely on huge grosses from international markets. More and more, big moviegoing markets like China have largely abandoned Hollywood product in favor of homegrown blockbusters. It’s the reason why Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” a big hit at the domestic box office, won’t reach the box office heights of other Disney live-action remakes like “The Lion King” and “Aladdin” (despite “Little Mermaid” being a much better movie compared to those two).

Studios obviously want billion-dollar performers, and recent hits like “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” prove it’s still possible. But those types of movies have become more and more rare. They became “must-see-on-the-big-screen” type movies, and, conveniently, added pricier premiums like IMAX and 3D to boost those box office revenues even further.

Blame it on COVID, or blame it on the fact that even low-income homes can afford a big screen TV in their living rooms, more and more people now seem perfectly fine waiting for almost everything else in the moviegoing market. Disney Plus has the other four “Indiana Jones” movies? Great. That means, eventually, the fifth one will be on there too.

People aren’t going. Sure, studios can still cheer for their big opening weekend numbers, but those numbers don’t mean much when the price of tickets are double or more than what they were even a few years ago. Do the math. Far fewer people saw “Dial of Destiny” compared to attendance numbers for the last installment, 2008’s “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”

Some media outlets seem to enjoy the doom-and-gloom approach to box office reporting. The opening weekend for “Elemental” was the worst ever for a Pixar film (a significant feat, again, because ticket prices cost much more than what they did in the studio’s early years). Dozens and dozens of articles flooded the internet, talking about how Pixar’s box office bad luck was the result of a hundred different things.

Then “Elemental” kept doing solid business across several weeks, thanks in part to strong word-of-mouth and a lack of kid-friendly programming in theaters. It’s now well over $100 million at the domestic box office, a number most analysts deemed impossible after its dismal opening weekend. It has already outgrossed “The Flash,” which opened against it on the same mid-June weekend.

It’s a modest success story that nevertheless continues to get pummeled by certain media outlets. It’s because Pixar movies typically cost around $200 million to make, and so Disney likely still won’t be able to turn a profit on its theatrical run.

Nobody ever really worries about Disney making less money, and the studio has numerous other ways to monetize its product. Ultimately, though, it isn’t that hard to understand the situation. Fewer people go to movies. The studios know this. No “creative overhaul” at Pixar is going to change that fact.

Yes, $300 million is way too much to spend on a movie, especially one as mediocre as “Fast X.” COVID-protocols and disease-related shutdowns are the likely cause of inflated budgets on Indy and “Mission: Impossible.” Hopefully we’re well past the worst of that situation and budgets will come back down to earth. Still, it costs good money to hurl Tom Cruise over the cliff or stick him to the side of a really tall building.

Theater owners feel the immediate impact of fewer people at the movies. Fewer must-see blockbusters means fewer butts in the seats. The budget for “Indiana Jones” doesn’t make a difference to the theaters screening it. Not enough people are going. Simple. Time will tell what that means for theaters across the country, including the local establishments.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.