Box-office sales cool after hot summer
By Jake Coyle
AP film writer
NEW YORK
Hollywood came into its fall season buoyed by a near-record summer, the comfort of having three aces up its sleeve (James Bond, “Star Wars” and the final “Hunger Games” film), plus a string of studio spectacles geared more for adults than teens.
The results, though, have been mixed for most films not named “The Martian.” Last weekend, in particular, drove home the point, when five new wide releases – most strikingly the $30 million awards season heavyweight “Steve Jobs,” with a paltry $7.1 million launch in wide release – all failed to click.
The streak appears likely to continue through this Halloween weekend, with Warner Bros.’ “Our Brand Is Crisis,” a political satire starring Sandra Bullock, unlikely to add much firepower to the box office. Salvation won’t arrive until the following weekend with the opening of Sony’s “Spectre,” the 24th James Bond film and a certain blockbuster.
It’s been a humbling few weeks for some of Hollywood’s best efforts to enliven multiplexes with ambitious films, most notably with the 3-D spectacle of Robert Zemeckis’ “The Walk” and the starry stature of the Aaron Sorkin-scripted “Steve Jobs.”
The box-office downturn, too, comes at the same time new inroads are being made into the traditional theatrical release window – developments that could signal coming change for the industry, particularly if it continues to struggle to launch such movies.
In an interview ahead of the release for “The Walk,” Sony chief Tom Rothman called making broad-audience movies that aren’t sequels or based on a comic book “the dominant issue in our business.” The last several weeks have proven that Hollywood, despite a year sure to rank as among the highest grossing, isn’t closer to figuring out how to do that.
Many of the fall’s anticipated releases tried to hook moviegoers with 3-D. It’s been an effective strategy in recent years for films from “Avatar” to “Gravity,” although the novelty wore off long ago for many moviegoers.
While 3-D helped drive the robust grosses for Ridley Scott’s “The Martian” ($167 million domestically, No. 1 for three of the past four weeks), it didn’t do the same for “Everest” ($41.9 million) or “The Walk” ($9.9 million), both of which opened first on IMAX and large-format screens in hopes of selling audiences on a higher-priced, premium experience.
Others have depended on the full wrappings of a prestige picture, including Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies.”