The end of the summer of 2017 has arrived in historic fashion!
The summer box office of 2017 in North America will be down nearly 16 percent over last year. This is the steepest decline in modern times and eclipsing the 14.6 percent dip in 2014. Along with the dubious decline at the box office, summer of 2017 will also be the first time since 2006 that summer didn’t clear $4 billion.
ComScore is predicting that revenue will end up at roughly $3.78 billion and is almost assured of hitting a 25-year low in terms of the number of tickets sold, according to Box Office Mojo.
The biggest issue with this year’s summer releases is a number of domestic bombs, including King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets and The Dark Tower. Adding the R-rated comedies, Baywatch, The House and Rough Night all bombed despite impressive star power. Paul Dergarabedian stated,
“The lesson for Hollywood this summer is that every movie counts when it comes to box office and there are no ‘throwaway’ titles. At least three tentpoles missed the mark in North America as well as a handful of R-rated comedies that left audiences frowning, and the missing revenue from those failures could arguably have left a $500 million-plus void in the marketplace — enough to turn a potentially strong $4 billion-plus summer season heavyweight into a 98-pound weakling,”
Year-to-date, domestic revenue is now down 5.7 percent in 2017.
