Good afternoon from Los Angeles, wherever you may be. Ladies and germs, we have a bomb. "Men in Black: International" is projected to gross about $26 million in North America this weekend, a paltry sum for a $110-million production.
It is possible the movie will break even thanks to ticket sales overseas. The franchise name still means something in far-flung parts of the world. But the movie made about half of what the three previous "Men in Black" films took in their opening weekend — not the sign of a healthy franchise.
Many sharp Hollywood reporters, including Bloomberg's Anousha Sakoui and the Los Angeles Times' Ryan Faughnder, are citing franchise fatigue. The failure of "Men in Black" follows the poor performance of a few other sequels this summer — "Dark Phoenix," the latest "X-Men" film, and "The Secret Life of Pets 2," a sequel to Illumination's hit film from 2016. Both are on track to gross far less than their predecessors.
But I'd like to add a little wrinkle to this idea. Reporters write about franchise fatigue every summer. Here is the LA Times in 2017, Slate in 2016 and Variety all the way back in 2010. Sequels aren't failing because audiences are tired of sequels, reboots and franchises. Sequels are failing because Hollywood makes too many of them, and because many of them are of poor quality.
Every summer, some movies succeed, and some movies fail. If some movies fail and almost every movie released over the summer is a sequel or reboot, that means some sequels and reboots have to fail too. It's just a question of which ones are going to fail.
People only go to so many movies per year. The average person went to 4 movies a year in 2018, about the same amount they did in 2008. If you only go to 4 movies a year, you are going to save those 4 trips for the films you really want to see. Some decisions will be easy; everyone has favorites. People showed up in droves for "Avengers: Endgame" and will do the same next weekend for "Toy Story 4."
Other decisions will be influenced by word of mouth, reviews or a fresh paycheck. And so, if Hollywood reboots an old franchise like "Men in Black" without its two main stars — and then it gets terrible reviews — who exactly is going to go see that movie?
Weekends are our best chance to catch up on whatever movies and TV we missed during the week. But we only have so much time, and so we have to make decisions.
Just this weekend, I watched a few episodes of "Fleabag," the biting Amazon comedy about a young British woman, marveled at Martin Scorsese's new Bob Dylan documentary on Netflix and even caught an old movie (Spike Lee's "Crooklyn.") after the Dodgers game Friday night. If I had some extra time, I might have started Ava DuVernay's "When They See Us" or HBO's "Chernobyl."
One activity I never considered: going to the theater to watch "Men in Black: International." It would appear I am not alone. — Lucas Shaw
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