Why the Failure of “Assassin’s Creed” Shows Us What’s Wrong With Hollywood
There’s a point where you have to ask when Hollywood will figure out that enough is enough. They keep churning out more and more “blockbuster” films every year, and honest to god there are only so many weekends in a year and people willing to go out to theaters. 2016 was jam packed with these huge tent pole films, and 2017 looks like it’ll be worse.
And while there have been some major successes this year, there have also been a ton of flops. The most recent being, of course, Assassin’s Creed.
I mean, did you even remember that Assassin’s Creed came out last weekend? I barely did, and I certainly didn’t see it. You probably didn’t either, since the movie had only a $14.9 million dollar opening weekend, and had a six day total of $22.4 million. Right now it’s estimated the film will lose anywhere from $75 million to $100 million for the studio.
And I’m just stuck asking why didn’t they see this coming? I mean, Fox literally put the movie out right after a highly Star Wars film. We’ve been skeptical about its success in our earlier coverage of the film, and it really looks like we were right on the mark.
And I have to ask myself, why was a site run out of a small apartment in Indiana and a basement in Wisconsin better at predicting the box office outcome on a major release than the highly paid studio execs who picked a Christmas release for Assassin’s Creed?
The historic reality of Hollywood is that the big pictures subsidized the less successful ones. The whole industry is a numbers game. But then the blockbuster money started coming in, and studios got greedy. More and more of the films are these huge visual spectacles, and while enough have been profitable, there has to be a breaking point. Those less successful pictures used to be much cheaper affairs, so they were easier losses to take. As the films that flop get more and more expensive though, the numbers are going to shift. Studios are going to start losing more and more money, and something is going to have to give.
There is a blockbuster bubble right now, and it’s going to burst.
Probably sooner than later.
Via THR
