Hollywood Has a Bad-Movie Problem
Domestic audiences are rejecting this summer’s procession of tired sequels, and international grosses won’t be enough to keep studios afloat forever.
Take a quick glance at the box-office returns for June, and you could draw an easy conclusion: Hollywood has a franchise problem. Films like Pirates of, , , and have all underperformed, each making hundreds of millions less than their immediate forebears (or, in the case of , a Brendan Fraser film that came out in 1999). But to think that, you’d have to ignore some of the biggest hits of the year: , , , and , all new entries in long-running franchises.
