Hollywood Executives Admit Much Of Their Box Office Is Never Coming Back, Who Would Have Guessed?
It's a well-known fact that Hollywood veers extremely far to the left, politically. Wealthy celebrities like George Clooney frequently host fundraisers for Democrat Party candidates, as do even richer studio executives like Jeffrey Katzenberg. All while claiming to be concerned for the working man in America.
That political ideology has, unsurprisingly, been infused into a sizable portion of motion picture releases coming from the entertainment industry. Especially after 2016.
And in a stunning turn of events, that political messaging, contempt for their audience and low quality content has finally come back to bite them.
Donna Langley, the head of Universal Studios, told reporters that box office receipts are down domestically and globally from pre-2020 levels. And they don't think they'll ever recover that audience.
"We really don't think we're going to recapture that, Langley said at an event during the Cannes film festival.
Well gee, whose fault is that?
CANNES, FRANCE - (L-R) Bryan Lourd, Salma Hayek, Donna Langley and François-Henri Pinault attend Kering And Cannes Film Festival Official Dinner on May 19, 2024 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Getty Images for Kering)
Hollywood Collapsing Under The Weight Of Its Own Incompetence
Not all of the blame for Hollywood's rapidly declining box office success is due to political messaging. Though, of course, that does play a substantial role.
The industry also has spent most of the past few years churning out low quality work, with even Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledging that the studio, in all facets, has not made good movies or television shows.
READ: Disney Admits More Mistakes With Its Film And TV Content: 'Not Quality'
It's not just Disney. The list of Best Picture winners at the Academy Awards since 2020, other than Oppenheimer is, well, disappointing to say the least.
- 2020 - Nomadland
- 2021 - Coda
- 2022 - Everything, Everywhere, All At Once
- 2023 - Oppenheimer
Simply, there aren't as many good movies being released in a given year as there used to be. Hollywood lost focus on making quality films, and instead focused on hitting the correct social justice messaging bullet points. Quite literally.
Several years ago, the Academy Awards announced it would be requiring diversity, equity and inclusion quotas for potential nominees. What better way of telling the audience that quality comes second than quite literally telling them that quality comes second?
Sure enough, while there are a few outliers, moviegoers have been bombarded with mediocrity, time and time again. And instead of paying through the nose to see that mediocrity in theaters, many have decided to wait for movies to hit streaming services. Or ignored them altogether.
This is what happens when you dilute the quality of the product you produce. That's exactly what Hollywood's done; turn even harder into politics, alienate viewers while ignoring the lessons learned from films like Top Gun: Maverick that were massive success stories without preaching.
It's no one's fault but their own that their box office is down 20 percent. And given what they continue to put out, even for television, it's clear they haven't learned their lesson.
READ: NBC To Debut New Show About Bi-Sexual Lions, Gay Penguins, Pansexual Primates And Trans Animals
Maybe when they're down 50 percent.