CHRISTIAN TOTO: NY Times: Is Hollywood’s Movie Star Era Over? Welcome to the party, pals.
The article’s title pulls no punches: “25 Movies, Many Stars, 0 Hits: Hollywood Falls to New Lows.”
The story itself doesn’t, either.
Theaters in the United States and Canada collected $445 million across all titles in October, the lowest total on record, after adjusting for inflation and excluding 2020, when the pandemic darkened screens.
For context, October ticket sales in 2019 totaled an adjusted $1 billion, according to Comscore.
Why? How much time do you have? It’s easy to point to the obvious causes:
- The rise of streaming competition
- The shrinking window for films hitting VOD platforms
- The rise of consequential video game titles
- Social media
- Shrinking attention spans in Gen Z
- The pandemic fallout
And the ones media outlets won’t go near.
- Stars made themselves toxic to half the country with their political views
- Stars are, for the most part, over-exposed
- The movies just aren’t very good, in toto
- The Woke Mind Virus still infects the industry
- Hollywood has lost touch with the common man
The blame game follows the classic improv guidebook: “Yes, and …” No one cause is to blame. Combine them all, and you’ve got a serious problem.
And we haven’t mentioned the letters “A” and “I” yet. Gulp.
The arrival of the holiday season means that a trio of big-budget sequels, the follow-ups to Wicked, Avatar and Zootopia, will help goose Hollywood’s box office somewhat as the year concludes, but even there, as Christian writes, “Those sequels will cushion the blow for a reeling industry. None of the three is driven by star power. That’s no accident.” Hollywood churning through product mostly shot in the last year of the Biden administration, largely bereft of movie stars, has made for a lousy year at the movie theater: