Hollywood's summer of flops

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Even in a summer filled with box office failures, Ben-Hur is a flop of "biblical proportions," said Marissa Martinelli at Slate. Paramount Pictures and MGM spent more than $100 million to make and market the retelling of the swords-and-sandals epic, but the film recouped just $11.4 million during its August opening weekend. It's the latest in a string of high-profile disappointments for Hollywood studios plagued by middling reviews and "remake-and-sequel fatigue," including Steven Spielberg's The BFG and Paul Feig's Ghostbusters reboot. "Big-budget flops are no longer uncommon in Hollywood," said Brooks Barnes at The New York Times. Paramount has had a particularly spectacular series of face-plants this year, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows; Whiskey Tango Foxtrot; and Zoolander 2. Analysts say Paramount could lose $350 million this year, and parent company Viacom may even sell the struggling studio.

To compete in Hollywood's increasingly winner-take-all landscape, studios need blockbusters, said Ben Fritz at The Wall Street Journal. Success in the movie business increasingly depends on making one of the year's few breakthrough hits. Lately, many studios have struck out badly while swinging for the fences. There have been 15 big-budget flops so far in 2016, compared with eight this time last year. On the bright side, global box office receipts are actually up slightly from 2015. But here at home, the message is go big — or bomb. So far this year, the five most popular films account for 30 percent of the total domestic box office, meaning more profits for just a handful of winners, and "a smaller pool of moviegoers left to see everything else." This summer's clear victor is Walt Disney, said Tom Huddleston Jr. at Fortune. Not only was it behind the season's two highest-grossing movies — Captain America: Civil War and Finding Dory — it's the only studio to gross more than $1 billion at the domestic box office this summer. Warner Bros. is a "distant second," with just over $750 million.

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Hollywood probably won't learn much from its "summer of slumps," said Jason Guerrasio at Business Insider. This season's poor box office has been blamed on the public's boredom with endless sequels and remakes, but only two of the top box office performers were original stories: the animated film The Secret Life of Pets and the comedy Central Intelligence. Don't expect dismal reviews to force studios to up their game, either. Even when movies are bad, some of them still manage to attract droves of ticket buyers. Suicide Squad took in an estimated $135.1 million its first weekend — the biggest opening ever for an August release — despite being universally panned. "So get ready for the endless stream of superheroes and franchises to continue apace." Animated movies have been a bright spot this year, said Matt Pressberg at The Wrap. Three of the 10 highest-grossing animated movies of all time hit theaters in 2016. One reason is that it's easier to dub animated films, making them more accessible to foreign audiences. Zootopia earned $235.6 million in China, the world's second-largest movie market, becoming the highest-grossing Disney film ever released in the country. And unlike disasters like Ben-Hur, this year's crop of animated films were actually good movies. "The kids are not just all right — they're keeping the box office afloat."