It’s been a rough summer for the movie industry, with a lot of big budget movies stumbling and barely making a profit, and the industry as a whole having its second worst summer since 2001.
Vox’s Todd VanDerWerf has a great article up today that looks at the winners and losers of the summer, and analyzes what it takes for a movie to be a success in this environment. He discusses the two traditional paths to success (giant tent-pole movie that you endlessly promote and smaller movies with controlled budgets with a clear target audience) as well as why so many big movies struggled this summer.
Must-read look at the summer movie season.
I also would like to give a shout out to one of my favorite movies of this summer – Kubo and the Two Strings, a fantastic stop-action animated from from the LAIKA studio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-6qJzeb3A
Along with telling a darkly sensitive story about a young boy trying to find out the truth about his samurai father, it also features gorgeous animation and terrific cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” by Regina Spektor. If you haven’t been to see this sleeper of a movie, do so!
https://youtu.be/8hUOKjy-9-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyKhythKnts