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#59. The Substandard on Summer Box Office Blues
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Dudes Chatting — summer box office and Hollywood quality: All three hosts dig into what turned out to be the worst Labor Day weekend at the box office in 17 years — for the first time since 1992, no major studio released a film in more than 1,000 theaters. The biggest new entries were the 40th-anniversary re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (901 screens) and Tulip Fever (765 screens), which Sonny reads from a Deadline report. The hosts debate whether a quality drought is driving the slump or whether Hollywood has structurally deprioritized domestic audiences in favor of overseas markets. JVL argues that mid-budget adult fare has nearly vanished, while Sonny notes that genuine hits like Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, and Spider-Man: Homecoming all performed well — suggesting the audience still shows up for good movies. The Hitman's Bodyguard is cited as an overperformer despite its modest ambitions, and Annabelle: Creation is mentioned as a surprise success. The conversation teases the upcoming full episode on Close Encounters and ranks the Spielberg catalog.
Full transcript
JVL00:00:00Wait, hold on. Hold on. I'm sorry, I'm not prepared for this yet.
Vic00:00:12Hello, and welcome to another micro-episode of The Substandard, sponsored by Dollar Shave Club. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of TheSubstandard are available every Thursday at 11 a.m. Well, we just finished up the worst Labor Day weekend at the box office, I think it's 17 years?
Sonny00:00:34Yeah, it's bad. I want to just read two paragraphs from Deadline. Go for it. Deadline.com. For the first time in 25 years, both major studio and specialty distributors will not be releasing any new wide releases north of 1,000 theaters. So, there were no wide releases above 1,000. Theaters the last weekend. This is kind of a shocking... The last time this happened, 1992, Universal Pictures' Matthew Broderick comedy, Out on a Limb, debuted 703 locations.
Vic00:01:12That, by the way, that was one of the worst movies I'd ever seen. The girl in it is terrible. And you know it's bad when the trailer is like the best of the movie, where they put it all out there. And then once you see this part, oh, that's it. I mean, it was a... Really awful, awful movie.
Sonny00:01:30So, in the weekend that just finished, the two biggest new films were the 40th anniversary re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 901 screens. And Tulip Fever. Got some Tulip Fever, guys. Only prescription. More tulips. 765 screens.
Vic00:01:48Yes. But Annabelle Creation keeps on going, isn't it? That was like second. And it's made a billion dollars now. It actually has a... It actually has made something like... It's on its way to making $100 million on a $15 million budget.
Sonny00:02:02Yeah, one of the biggest hits of the summer was a movie about a doll. The origin story of a scary doll.
Vic00:02:08It's actually like the new Boss Baby here, because it just keeps on going. JVL, welcome back. How are you? What's going on? Hello, boys.
JVL00:02:18It was bad, right? It was a really... It was a bad weekend. Bad weekend. The bad summer.
Sonny00:02:23I mean, it could have been much, much worse. So, last weekend... Was the worst summer in seven... Or the worst weekend in 17 years until, like, right after 9-11. And this weekend is the worst... It's going to kind of depend on the finals. We're still waiting on some final numbers. But, according to Deadline, again, this is the... This is looking to be the worst Labor Day weekend since 1998. So, there is danger here.
JVL00:02:54The danger is this. Do... If you make the argument that the problem is the quality of movies...
Vic00:03:03Yes.
JVL00:03:04Are we... Does anybody want to ride that horse?
Vic00:03:08The problem being that it's just... People are getting tired because they're all reboots, and they're all sequels, and there's nothing really original, and that's why we're not going to see movies. The movies stink.
Sonny00:03:16Yes. I mean, I think that that is certainly a part of this.
JVL00:03:19So, if that's the case, then there has to be somebody to blame. And Hollywood... Hollywood used to do this all the time, about 15 years ago. And when you would read it, and people would talk about how terrible the movies were... And this is true. This is one of William Goldman's truisms. We used to write this Oscar column for premiere, and he would say, This year was the worst movie in the history of Hollywood, and next year will be even worse. And he's always right. And so, they blamed teenage boys. And the problem with the movie industry was that all the teenage boys were the ones who bought movie tickets and paid for popcorn. And we were just... Making movies for the audience that's there. Well, now the audience is foreigners, and I don't hear anybody saying, The problem is all the foreigners.
Vic00:04:08It's just crickets, you know?
JVL00:04:10Because to say that, you then have to say foreign audiences have tastes which are not sophisticated.
Sonny00:04:16Well, sub-teenage boy. Sub-teenage boy.
JVL00:04:20And nobody outside of the current White House is willing to stand up and say that.
Sonny00:04:25Certainly nobody in Los Angeles. Right, no.
Vic00:04:27That's not true at all. Transformers did great in China.
Sonny00:04:30Right. Well, I mean, and that's the thing we have to, we should kind of temper all this with, we are talking about domestic box office numbers, not foreign. The numbers, but even the numbers.
JVL00:04:39No, but that's why. This is what I'm saying. Because the overall box office is so important now. They are making movies for that box office. Yes. And those movies are not, as it turns out, the kinds of movies that Americans want. Want to watch. But why did they stop wanting to watch it, though, is the thing.
Sonny00:05:03Because I don't think you could make a real convincing case that the new Transformers movie is markedly worse than the one before, or the one before that, or the one before that. And I don't think that you could argue that the Pirates of the Caribbean movie that came out this summer is remarkably worse than the one before that, or the three before that. I mean, I do think that there is, there is a, we have a real problem on our hands insofar as, like, the audiences have stopped showing up, even though the product is basically the same.
JVL00:05:32I don't think it's basically the same. I think this, this summer is noticeably worse. I would say if, so, if you were drawing the curve of the decline in Hollywood quality, and you just assume that the slope of the curve is always downward, per the Goldman Doctrine, I would say that this year, even within that curve, you see it, the DXDT changing.
Sonny00:05:54You see a, you see a asymptotic. Slope downward. I would maybe not asymptotic, but it's not great. Is that what it is? Isn't it? I did terrible. Is this geometry?
JVL00:06:02I didn't do well in that. They're making movies for foreign audiences, and when you do that for long enough, the domestic audiences say, uh, okay, well, this is, I'll just stay home with my, my phone.
Sonny00:06:13My, my, my Netflix. Yeah. And my video games.
JVL00:06:16I'll consume, I'll consume my content at home on my phone.
Sonny00:06:19Well, everybody is at home watching Twin Peaks, The Return. That's what everyone is, that's what everyone's doing now, right?
JVL00:06:25There are at least three people on Twitter who are watching Twin Peaks, The Return.
Sonny00:06:29I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm like 80% sure that I follow literally everyone who's watching that show, judging by the, the numbers. Very possibly.
JVL00:06:37So, I don't, and the problem with this is, I don't know that there's, so if it's true, so I'm making this argument without actually believing 100% that it's true. I'm just saying that if you believe the problem is the quality, and it may not be, the problem may be the environment, the entertainment environment, could be a million other things. But if you believe the problem is quality, then you have to find an audience to blame, because there's clearly some audience demand side of it, and if you do that, then you have to wind up blaming foreign audiences. If that turns out to be true, it is not clear to me what the way is out of this cul-de-sac, because foreign audiences are only going to become more important to Hollywood movie grosses, and so how do you get out of this?
Vic00:07:14Right, and studios will just have to gear their movies more towards that. Because they're, they're in the business of making money, obviously, and how do you make money, and how do you, well, let's make movies that they like.
Sonny00:07:22So basically we are in the...
JVL00:07:23Well, that's not true. If they were in the business of making money, there would be more women directors. That's true.
Sonny00:07:28Let's talk about some of the biggest hits of the summer. Let's talk about some, it hasn't all been...
JVL00:07:33Some of the...
Sonny00:07:33It hasn't all been bad. Wonder Woman, the most inspiring film of all time, grossed $409 million at the domestic box office. That's literally double what I thought it would, I thought it would do about Thor numbers, and instead it did, like, first Spider-Man numbers, which is pretty, pretty impressive. Don't you think? Good. Don't you think?
JVL00:07:54And who's making, and who's making... Money off that Wonder Woman movie. The number one movie of the summer? Beauty and the Beast. Well, that came out... Both big, strong female leads. Didn't that come out in, like, February or March?
Sonny00:08:04I don't think that's a summer movie.
JVL00:08:05I think it was, it went wide in March. Yeah, I guess it's... It's spring. Anyway, but it's like, but yeah, the two big movies of the year. The big movies of the year are strong female leads.
Sonny00:08:16Also, we should highlight Spider-Man Homecoming, which did $325 million at the domestic box office, which is much, much better than Amazing Spider-Man 2, where they have... Initially, they have successfully restarted this franchise. The last Amazing Spider-Man movie grossed $202 million, but we should also point out that Spider-Man 3, in a time when ticket prices were lower, et cetera, you know, you adjust for inflation, all that, Spider-Man 3 did $336 million. I'm getting confused on which ones. Right. Spider-Man 3 was... Spider-Man 3 was the one with the Sandman. Ah, with Thomas Hayden Church. And Amazing Spider-Man 2 was with poor Dane DeHaan as the Green Goblin. He's had a bad year. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, of course, Dunkirk. Dunkirk is a hit, $180 million domestic. It's running about 5% ahead of...
JVL00:09:03It has now, thank God, slid ahead of the Lego Batman movie. Yeah, it has done that. It has done that.
Sonny00:09:09Thank God.
Vic00:09:10But only one movie, only one movie has been number one at the box office for three weeks in a row.
Sonny00:09:15The Hitman's Bodyguard. The Hitman's Bodyguard. They really did a good job of figuring out when to release this one, when literally nothing else was on the screens. Yeah, that's right. You know, but... Xavier, do you have any other thoughts? I'm sure it's fine.
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