It's becoming increasingly clear, while superheroes are still winning the opening day battle, they lack the staying power of the furry movies; it's kind of weird to say Captain America or BvS well-north-of-100-million opening weekends are disappointing, but they both are or were well below expectations (while movies like Zootopia and The Jungle Book, while lower box office openers, outperformed expectations and have had higher holds week to week).
In fact, it's looking like Captain America isn't the slam dunk, well-here-comes-a-billion it was supposed to be. It had a smaller Friday than BvS, and since it is the start of summer, it will actually have competition, though, it should be pointed out, BvS still lost to The Boss in its third week when it should have blown it away, which kind of messed up my "three weeks superhero, three weeks furry" pattern, though it's basically held since.
I'm wondering if we're not seeing the "superhero bubble" bursting so much as, to change the metaphor slightly, a superhero balloon slowly deflating (a deflation that began when "ha ha, nothings going to stop Avengers 2 at the box office" became "well, look at that, Jurassic World nut punched it there, didn't it?"); the only superhero movie this year to "overperform", prediction-wise, is Deadpool, and it had the weakest competition and when the best prediction-to-performance movie of the genre is not a straight, but parody example of the genre, and is in fact often times "anti-" superhero conventions, well, can it really be described as a healthy sign for the genre?
And, interestingly, looking at the schedule, the big players are still furries and superheroes for the first couple months of summer, before other types of movies start to appear; The Secret Life of Pets is kind of wait and see (it's Illumination, who have a box office history, but on the other hand, that is mostly the Despicable Me/Minions franchise), but there's also Finding Dory, and also, maybe, Angry Birds. Meanwhile, superhero-wise, actually, it's mostly just X-Men: Apocalypse, while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is probably a minor player (and kind of a hybrid).
It's becoming increasingly clear, while superheroes are still winning the opening day battle, they lack the staying power of the furry movies; it's kind of weird to say Captain America or BvS well-north-of-100-million opening weekends are disappointing, but they both are or were well below expectations (while movies like Zootopia and The Jungle Book, while lower box office openers, outperformed expectations and have had higher holds week to week).
In fact, it's looking like Captain America isn't the slam dunk, well-here-comes-a-billion it was supposed to be. It had a smaller Friday than BvS, and since it is the start of summer, it will actually have competition, though, it should be pointed out, BvS still lost to The Boss in its third week when it should have blown it away, which kind of messed up my "three weeks superhero, three weeks furry" pattern, though it's basically held since.
I'm wondering if we're not seeing the "superhero bubble" bursting so much as, to change the metaphor slightly, a superhero balloon slowly deflating (a deflation that began when "ha ha, nothings going to stop Avengers 2 at the box office" became "well, look at that, Jurassic World nut punched it there, didn't it?"); the only superhero movie this year to "overperform", prediction-wise, is Deadpool, and it had the weakest competition and when the best prediction-to-performance movie of the genre is not a straight, but parody example of the genre, and is in fact often times "anti-" superhero conventions, well, can it really be described as a healthy sign for the genre?
And, interestingly, looking at the schedule, the big players are still furries and superheroes for the first couple months of summer, before other types of movies start to appear; The Secret Life of Pets is kind of wait and see (it's Illumination, who have a box office history, but on the other hand, that is mostly the Despicable Me/Minions franchise), but there's also Finding Dory, and also, maybe, Angry Birds. Meanwhile, superhero-wise, actually, it's mostly just X-Men: Apocalypse, while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is probably a minor player (and kind of a hybrid).