Hollywood draws curtain on worst box office summer since 2006

Now that autumn is upon us, Hollywood is turning its back on the worst box office summer it has had since 2006.

The Labor Day weekend just gone in the US has put a cap on the movie business’s woes, with the holiday being the least profitable in nearly 20 years.

According to data from Bloomberg, the entire summer brought in $3.8 billion at the US box office, and while that seems like a healthy figure, it’s anything but.

It’s the first time that the summer tally has dropped below $4 billion since 2006, with ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’ remaining at number one in the US box office charts despite a woeful turnout.

Adam Aron, CEO of US cinema chain AMC told Variety: “To say we were disappointed would be an understatement. The quarter was simply a bust.”

Summer 2017 has seen a wealth of flops, from Guy Ritchie’s ‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ to the Dwayne Johnson-fronted ‘Baywatch’.

The Stephen King adaptation of ‘The Dark Tower’ took $20 million on its opening weekend, compared with $134 million by ‘Suicide Squad’ during the same weekend last year.

It’s resulted in the share prices of cinema chains plummeting, with AMC seeing a 45 percent drop since the Memorial Day holiday in May.

Compared to last year, the market is down just over six percent, with movies up to this point in the year having taken $7.59 billion, compared with $8.09 billion last year.

But Paul Dergarabedian, of the box office analysis firm ComScore Inc, seemed to be taking a positive look at things, telling Bloomberg: “The good news is we have ‘It’ this week, and then movies such as ‘The Lego Ninjago Movie,’ ‘Kingsman: The Golden Circle’ and ‘Blade Runner 2049’ to come.

“We are going to make up a lot of ground in the next three months.”

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