When was the last time you went to see a movie? I don’t go to the movies anymore and apparently, I am not alone.
The Hollywood Reporter writes that the box office numbers are the worst they’ve been since 2013.
Through Sunday, revenue at the North American box office was an estimated $2.74 billion, the lowest showing since 2013 for the comparable time period, according to Comscore.
That’s down 17 percent from the same corridor in 2018 — when Black Panther opened — and 18 percent from 2017, home of winter and early spring hits Beauty and the Beast and Logan, among other titles.
The big question now is whether the box office can rebound and surpass the record $11.9 billion collected domestically in 2018, and an all-time best $41.7 billion globally.
There’s a few reasons why I stopped going to the movies, the first being that the movies are not very good. The quality of film seems to have gone down while the price for the movies has gone up, especially when you compare the quality of movie theater movies to the entertainment available on Amazon Prime or Netflix. Original programming on HBO and Showtime is better than the schlock in the movie theaters. I’d much rather watch those shows or movies than head to the theater for a big fat disappointment. I can also stop watching something I don’t like with streaming media and find something I do like. Once I fork over money to the theater and buy a diet coke which costs $5, I’m invested.
People like to watch stories but the stories are the same all over again or they have so much CGI, they look like video games, or they have some woke lefty message. I’m not interested in that, just tell me a good story.
The other reason I stopped going to the movies is that I am sick of enriching self-righteous Hollywooders with money so they can donate it to people who want to oppress me. I’m done enriching America’s court jesters to lecture me and call me names. They certainly are afforded the luxury of their thoughts but not on my dime.
Will Hollywood be able to turn around these dismal numbers?
“It may be tough to imagine at this point that 2019 could ultimately post record-breaking revenues, but a slow start that has handed the industry a 17 percent year-to-date deficit will in less than two weeks begin to assemble perhaps the greatest comeback in box office history with a monumental slate that will set into motion a herculean reversal of fortune,” says Paul Dergarabedian of Comscore.
The new Avengers movie is due out later this month, perhaps that will give Hollywood the boost it needs. I won’t be seeing it.