Not even superheroes could save Hollywood this summer

The Hollywood industry suffered its worst summer since 1997, after adjusting for inflation. U.S. ticket sales dropped 15% compared to last season. It was a disappointment for an industry that had hoped movies with giant robots, mutants and talking apes would follow up last year's stellar spell with another blockbuster summer. Compared to previous summer’s success of Hollywood, this is a dismal performance. Last year’s “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” grossed $421 million, while the summer of 2012 saw Joss Whedon’s “Avengers” generate $623 million. In fact, no film was able to cross the $US300-million mark domestically for the first time since 2001. The only winning prospects that could last a decent  box office run were much-hyped releases such as 20th Century Fox's X-Men: Days of Future Past, Paramount Pictures' Transformers: Age of Extinction and Sony Pictures' The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Besides action, movies like ‘Fault in Our Stars’ and ‘Maleficent’ were able to attract a certain section of the audience. The highest grosser of the year so far has been Marvel’s ‘Guardians of The Galaxy’ with less than 300 million dollars worldwide. Considering the kind of result we had last year, the figure seems much low.

The lack of breakout hits hurt the prospects for other movies as well. Hollywood is a momentum-driven business, big hits help draw in filmgoers, who then see trailers that bring them back the next week. That was not the case this summer. "It's been disappointing that there hasn't been a film that's really broken out like a $400-million hit domestically," said Bruce Nash, who runs a leading box-office analysis site. "We haven't had a film this year that has been a Harry Potter or an Avengers, and that inevitably knocks things down a bit," he added.

If there's a common refrain on Wall Street and in Hollywood as the season ends, it's that the next summer will restore balance with Avengers: Age of Ultron, Fast & Furious 7, Pixar's Inside Out and Universal's Jurassic World. But with so many entertainment options now vying for eyeballs, the fear is that summer 2014 is the start of a new reality. "You have to answer two critical questions: Do I have to see it now? And do I have to see it on the big screen?" asked an inquisitive Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn. "If the answer is 'no' to either, you are in trouble," he affirmed.