By Gustavo Buenrostro
Quality films are beginning to make an impact in Hollywood as studios take out screenings for films that flop.
This year has been disappointing for films. Box office numbers have been down and big blockbusters like “Wonder Woman” and “Spider-man:Homecoming” have kept the summer season from being a disaster.
But why is it that people aren’t going to the movies anymore?
One could argue that the reason is that ticket prices are too high. While that is a factor, perhaps the real reason is because people want their money’s worth.
Many films that have been released have not been hitting well with audiences.
One of the biggest flops of the summer was “The Mummy” with Tom Cruise.
The film made around $400 million worldwide and had a budget of $192 million. While this may seem like a lot of money, the studio expected it to make much more.
In fact, because of the failure of the film, the studio has delayed production on future films involving the classic movie monsters, according to a press release made by Universal Studios.
But what went wrong with the film? The film concentrated so much on the set up to its “Dark Universe” that it forgot to focus on the story it was telling.
Many moviegoers agreed, as the score shows on the Rotten Tomatoes website where critics and the audience can review films: Audiences gave it a 36 percent and an even lower score was given by critics with 16 percent.
These scores are indicative of what people want, which are quality films.
Because film prices are so high now, going to see a movie really has become an expensive outing.
People are going to websites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic because they want to make sure the movie they are interested in watching is worth the price of admission. Movies like “The Avengers” and “Star Wars” are films audiences are going to see.
These kind of films make a ton of money at the box office. Many studios can’t afford to make these kinds of films. If studios do, they do a bad job like the “The Mummy.”
Not only are big budget blockbusters a big risk, but many middle budget films suffer from it.
This past summer, however, a film called “Baby Driver” had good reviews and made a lot of money. It made over $200 million on a $34 million dollar budget.
That is huge for a low budget film. But it made that much money because of the quality of the film.
It made $21 million its opening weekend. After its initial release, it was re-released in theaters on Aug. 25 to more than 1,000 theaters.
There are some outliers that speak against quality films making more money. One of them was “Blade Runner 2049.”
Even though the scores are high with 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, it has not made as predicted.
In fact, “Blade Runner 2049” is one of the films that is being pulled from theaters.
The reviews say that the film is slow and takes its time. With a runtime of over 2 hours, this may be why it is not making as much money as the studio would have liked.
If anything, this shows people are becoming smarter in the films they want to see.
Audiences are speaking with their money and they want more quality films.