Hollywood Box Office Hits 16-Year-Low

by JASmius



Hollywood, meet Obamanomics.  Obamanomics, meet Hollywood:

Despite the best efforts of Jennifer Lawrence, two big family films, some horrible bosses, and The Mighty Christopher Nolan, according to Deadline, the weekend's box office collapsed to a sixteen-year-low.

Box Office Mojo reports the weekend earned just $70.4 million, which Deadline says is the worst post-Thanksgiving weekend, going all the way back to 1998. Mojo adds that this weekend was the second-worst of the year and somewhere around a 20% drop over this same weekend last year.

The most troubling detail in all of this is the under-performance of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1. The Jennifer Lawrence blockbuster is running way behind its predecessor, Catching Fire, which was released just last year during this exact same timeframe. After seventeen days, Mockingjay sits at $257 million. After the same number of days last year, Catching Fire sat at $335 million.

Mojo predicts Mockingjay will top out at $330 million, or more than $90 million less than Catching Fire.

That is a huge miss.

Maybe John Nolte is right about this and fewer people want to go to movies.  This might reflect Jennifer Lawrence's overexposure, or that the Hunger Games franchise has already run its course, or that, in general, Hollywood has lost any remaining semblance of original thought or creativity and can only churn out remakes, re-imaginings, pile-driver-like sequel after sequel after sequel of whichever of their creations do catch on, and otherwise, well, crap.

But the Great Obama Depression is also playing a role.  When you're running out of money and having to be primarily concerned with paying the rent/mortgage, keeping food on the table, not freezing to death et al, blowing twelve bucks at the neighborhood Cineplex to watch the cavortings of somebody ten thousand times your net worth is not going to rank very high on your priority list.

FWIW, I went to see one movie this year, I will go to see one movie next year, and I will go to see one movie in 2016.  Or, in other words, I don't go to see movies very often.  And now, thanks to Obamanomics, I am becoming a trend-setter.  Kind of like the American people are S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Obama Regime is Hydra.

I can't wait for the sequel to that one, can you?