Friday, June 11, 2010

This summer and that summer


Not all summers are created equal especially at the box office. One of my favorite summers of all time was the summer of 1996 when Independence Day came out and I spent the rest of my summer as a ten year old fighting aliens on my cousins farm in Georgia. Looking back, I don't really remember much else from that summer. The first "Nutty Professor" movie came out as did "Twister" and "The Rock" but overall, according to Hollywood analysts that too was a bad summer. That said, the thing that separates the then and now is that it is very doubtful another "Independence Day" will come out of this lot of films being released in 2010. I'm talking, a movie that will go on and gross all the way till fall and keep making money for many years after it.

I've been pretty wrong on most of my predictions so far, I think as far as this summer goes, everyone has. More are failing than I thought was possible. What's up with that? Economic problems in Europe probably arn't helping and like the studios big fight with the summer olympics in 1996 to get audiences, the world cup might be affecting audiences world wide--leaving international numbers pretty slim. Maybe that was in the cards all along, they've learned that they can't compete with a once every four year TV event, so they'll just release filler because they have to and make what they make. No sense trying to fight it.

That's probably what's going on. Notice throughout the rest of June and into early July there aren't many huge films coming. And July 4 weekend is like an empty coffin with the exception of "Last Airbender." That's one of the best weekends of the summer to release anything so the lack of something on that weekend signals to me, something is up. "Knight and Day," "Salt," "Inception" and "Predator" are about the only things left worth mentioning--on and the Mark Wahlburg/Will Ferrell thing in August. So yeah, it's a summer slump, but on the bright side, maybe next summer we won't have to deal with another summer barrage of nothing but franchises and bad adaptations, again, that's Iron Man 2, Shrek 4, Toy Story 3, Predator, Robin Hood, and so so much more.

1 comment:

  1. I'm already more excited for 2011 as a whole than I am about the rest of this year, to be honest. What with Captain America, Thor, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, Green Lantern, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, Deathly Hallows-Part II, etc., 2011 is shaping up like a good year for big budget entertainment at least. There's just more things coming out next year I wanna see. I can pretty much count all the films I really have to see for the rest of the year on one hand. Inception, Tron Legacy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part I. That's it. Of course, I'll see other stuff, and might be pleasantly surprised by something, I plan on seeing The Karate Kid this weekend, and there's always surprises in store once you get to awards season, but right now it's a pretty dull year of film.

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