The movie industry has not been doing well at the box office the past few months. Hollywood even ended a two-decade long tradition of releasing a major picture over Labor Day weekend. The industry is steadily declining and there are several reasons why.
A minority of people just aren’t willing to go see a movie in theaters. This is due to cable companies selling new movies to customers within a few weeks of their openings. The cost of buying the movie to view at home is usually cheaper than buying two tickets to the movie, and people don’t have to pay or sneak in snacks, so it’s more about saving money than laziness.
There is also the issue that films for young children have been made for the sole purpose of making money, with some studios just churning out movies that aren’t any good. The best example of this is The Emoji Movie, which was briefly the worst-reviewed film on Rotten Tomatoes and was just a copycat of other movies like Inside Out and Wreck-it-Ralph.
For movies aimed at older demographic groups, the problem is a lack of originality. Instead of coming up with new concepts that are bad, or poorly carrying out decent ideas, the mistake that studios make is rebooting old brands like Baywatch. Even though that example isn’t a terrible movie, the just-for-profit motive shines through.
Sequels also have been a problem for Hollywood in the past few years, and that still rings true with movies like Despicable Me 3 and Transformers: The Last Knight not doing well.
Further adding to Hollywood’s troubles is the development that TV shows are becoming more popular than films.
The main cause of this is online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu, which allow people to binge watch shows and get more invested than a watching a movie in theaters. The services also have films and update their inventory with new and old movies monthly. This pushes people on the fence about going to theaters to wait it out for the movie to be on their streaming service.
Overall, the film industry needs to come up with solutions to these problems before the profits decline even further. Making more quality and anticipated films would help, but the battle with cable and streaming services has only just begun.