So Much for Rebound Summer

I figured that while I was doing a summer box office wrap-up, I might as well check back in with my Summer Movie Wager results.  Despite there being a very small number of contenders this year, I wound up with my worst score in ages.  Here's how the summer actually went:

1. Top Gun: Maverick

2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

3. Jurassic World: Dominion

4. Minions: The Rise of Gru

5. Thor: Love and Thunder

6. Elvis

7. Nope

8. Lightyear

9. The Black Phone

10. Bullet Train

And here are my predictions from back in April:

1. Thor: Love and Thunder

2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (10 pts)

3. Top Gun: Maverick (5 pt)

4. Lightyear

5. DC League of Super Pets

6. Jurassic World: Dominion

7. Minions: The Rise of Gru

8. The Black Phone (7 pt)

9. Nope (5 pt)

10. Bullet Train (13 pt)

My biggest missteps were clearly being too optimistic on "Love and Thunder," "Lightyear," and "Super Pets," while misjudging the charms of "Elvis," "Maverick," and the "Minions."

Boy, did I not see "Maverick" coming.  The success of the Tom Cruise movie has set a heap of new records, and managed the unprecedented feat of winning the box office on both Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend this year.  It is a bona fide phenomenon.  Paramount delaying the film for as long as they did paid off in spades, and we can expect that the upcoming "Mission: Impossible" movies will be similarly massive.  

On the other hand, "Maverick" managed that Labor Day win in large part because of how little competition it had.  The summer started off strong, but fizzled out as the weeks went by.  The theaters went as far as to put together a National Cinema Day on September 3rd, with heavily discounted tickets to try and drum up some interest.  September is traditionally a slow month, but this year titles are so scarce that the biggest challenger to "Maverick" was a re-release of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" with added material.   Streaming has clearly taken a toll, with many films that we once would have expected to see in theaters, like the recent Sylvester Stallone film "Samaritan," staying out of theaters.  Only twenty-two films got wide releases this summer, about half the number from 2019.  Domestic grosses, however, were only down by roughly 20%.

Disney titles, in particular, have seen lower grosses.  PIXAR's "Lightyear" was a notable disappointment, after the studio's last three features all went directly to streaming.  There's a theory going around that having new PIXAR movies on Disney+ is creating an expectation that their animated films will always premiere on the service.  The relatively short theatrical window for the MCU films may also be contributing to the slump, though it's worth remembering that the latest "Spider-man" movie wound up being the highest grossing film of 2021.  I think that the recent batch of MCU films just haven't been the climactic crowd-pleasers we've come to expect, but that is a subject for another post.

I'm a little puzzled by "Super Pets" not doing well, since it's essentially "The Secret Life of Pets" with a bunch of superhero references, and is pretty watchable.  However, "Minions" was the big animated hit of the summer, even generating the eye-rolling #Gentleminions Tik-Tok trend.  It's been five years since the last "Despicable Me" film, and I guess this franchise has more goodwill than I thought.    

It's a relief to see that a few non-franchise films made the list.  "Nope," "The Black Phone," and "Bullet Train" are all original genre films that deserve their success.  I imagine that all of them would have been lost in the shuffle in a more competitive year.  "Elvis" genuinely surprised me, but I guess I should've learned by now not to count out Baz Luhrmann and his ability to orchestrate large-scale musical spectacle.  And it's worth noting that "Where the Crawdads Sing" came in at eleven, and the latest "Downton Abbey" movie at thirteen - films that weren't even on my radar. 

Next summer looks much more lively with "Guardians of the Galaxy," "Indiana Jones," "Mission: Impossible,""Transformers," Vin Diesel, and the great "Barbie" vs. "Oppenheimer" showdown incoming.  However, I don't expect my Summer Movie Wager scores will improve much.

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