ANALYSIS: TRUE. Hollywood’s Summertime Bombs Got a Lot More Disastrous This Year.

Summer moviegoing, from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, is a vital stretch for Hollywood, when studios release many of their biggest pictures and generate about 40 percent of annual sales. This year’s results reveal flaws in the industry’s focus on costly remakes and sequels, casting doubt on a strategy they’ll be relying on for years.

“Overall it was pretty awful,” said Doug Creutz, an analyst at Cowen & Co. “We have been talking about the increasingly bad ecosystem that we see theatrically and I think it definitely played out this summer.”

Of 32 summer movies released through Aug. 19 by the six major studios, 17 lost a total of $915.6 million, according to The Numbers, which looks at film costs and projects revenue for movies all the way through their release on commercial TV. Last year the studios released a total of 15 bombs with losses of $546.3 million.

It’s fun having a decent superhero movie or two to take my young sons to see each summer, but there’s precious little else, even for a grownup who likes big dumb summer movies.