SUMMER MOVIES | Hollywood roars back into action with 'Avengers'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Summer starts early this year in Hollywood with the potentially record-breaking release of “Avengers: Infinity War” Thursday, and the marquee Marvel superheroes couldn’t be coming at a better time.

The box office for the year is down nearly three percent, and the industry is looking to redeem itself after last summer, which, despite hits like “Wonder Woman,” had its worst performance in more than a decade. Although all studios are embracing the year-round blockbuster schedule and massive hits can emerge in any month, like “Black Panther” in February, “It” in September and “Star Wars” in December, with work and school vacations, nothing can beat the summer’s potential.

This summer movie going season, which typically runs from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, could get things back on track. Two of the most profitable franchises have major films on the slate. The Walt Disney Company and Marvel have “Avengers: Infinity War” (April 27) which some experts are predicting will score the biggest opening of all time, and Universal Pictures is releasing the sequel to the fifth highest domestic earner of all time, “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom,” on June 22.

And as with every summer, there are more than a handful of sequels and familiar brands coming to theaters, including: “Deadpool 2” (May 18); “Solo: A Star Wars Story” (May 25); “The Incredibles 2” (June 15); “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” (June 29); “The First Purge” (July 4); “Ant-Man and the Wasp” (July 6); “Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation” (July 13); “The Equalizer 2” (July 20); “Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!” (July 20); and “Mission: Impossible — Fallout” (July 27).

But Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Fritz whose new book “The Big Picture: The Fight for the Future of Movies,” examines the current state of the industry, notes that while the big, franchise, tent-pole films are always the highest-grossing and that films like “Jurassic World 2” and “Avengers: Infinity War” will be sure-fire hits, oversaturation is possible too.

“People do like to see the big franchise tent-pole films,” Fritz said. “But even if the studios make more of them, people are not going to more movies. The more of them there are, the more they are competing for the same box office dollars and as a result you see more flops.”

According to Box Office Mojo, in 2017, movie ticket sales were at a 25-year low, and competition for audience attention is only intensifying. Netflix has a whole slate of summer films too, from an Adam Sandler and Chris Rock comedy (“The Week Of,” April 27) to the WWII-set adaptation of “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.” This year too has shown a concentration of box office dollars on just a few films — “Black Panther,” Fritz noted, accounted for 23 percent of the ticket sales in the first three months of the year.

And it’s at least part of the reason why many studios are touting the diversity of their slates beyond the spectacle of superheroes and blockbusters.

“Today, it’s even more important that there is a wide variety of films out there, films that are provocative, that are thrilling, that obviously are entertaining and that you’re presenting them in new and exciting ways,” said Jim Orr, Universal Pictures’ president of domestic theatrical distribution. “We have right now a theater-going audience who is discerning and I think we need to keep that in mind with everything we put forth.”