Complain all you like about the litany of sequels and retreads we’ve been given this year, but the audiences have spoken: we like what Hollywood is giving us, and we’ve paid record amounts of money this year to see it. As has been predicted since the summer, the overall 2007 box office was up 5% over last year, and 4% over 2002, the previous best-ever year for the box office. Worldwide box office grosses reached $9.62 billion over the course of the year.
Even better, the five-day New Year’s weekend was the best-ever box office frame, raking in $268 million with the help of National Treasure 2, Alvin and the Chipmunks and I Am Legend. Yes, the second and third-best-ever box office frames also belong to 2007, being the long Christmas weekend and Memorial Day weekend, respectively.
In most ways this is great news. As recently as 2005 everyone was predicting the death of the movie theater, since box office receipts were way down that year and piracy was on the rise. The strong income in 2006 and 2007 indicates that the multiplex isn’t dead yet, and everyone in Hollywood can breathe a sigh of relief that they won’t have to fight for their industry any time soon.
At the same time, is this really the year that we wanted to send the signal, “Hooray for Hollywood!” Taking a look at the top ten best-grossing movies of the year, no fewer than half were sequels, nearly all of them regarded as lesser copies of the original (the fifth Harry Potter and The Bourne Ultimatum being the exception). Others were based on existing popular franchises-- The Simpsons Movie and Transformers-- and maybe half of them could be charitably considered worth watching. The main thing we have to be thankful for is that Wild Hogs and Alvin and the Chipmunks didn’t quite make the cut.
As someone who has a job because the movie industry is doing well, I don’t want to bite the hand that feeds me here. At the same time, I hate to think that this is the best we can do. 2008 will thankfully be absent of the glut of threequels we had this summer, but I don’t foresee any end to the trend of remaking everything until it’s driven into the ground. Sigh. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
