movies

Yet for the most part, none of the studio’s misses is damaging enough to force heads in the C-suite to roll.

Pity.

The downturn is striking when compared with the studio’s streak last year of “John Wick: Chapter 4” ($440 million worldwide), “Saw X” ($111 million) and “The Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” ($348 million). Those films, as well as most of 2024’s lineup, were greenlit by then-motion picture group chair Joe Drake, who was replaced by Adam Fogelson in January.

Studios live and die on the ability to spot winners. This might be as simple as spotting trends, so I thought John Wick 4 was great (when I was expecting it to be bad), Saw X was a return to form after a run of middling films but the Hunger Games prequel was largely forgettable but the key to them all is there is an solid core audience who will turn up and that will see you through the occasional rough installment (but too many and the cow dries up). Compare that with this year's films from them - Never Let Go was OK, the original Crow had a cult following but years of terrible sequels killed any core audience so the film.would have to be great on its own merits and it wasn't (other than the section at the opera) and Borderlands was badly conceived (it tried to get too much in) and you don't hire Eli Roth if you are going to get cold feet and remove all the violence (which was clearly so engrained that it left the action sequences, of which there were many) feeling very odd. That's not even down to needing someone with taste who can spot a quality script when they see one, that just needs some commonsense.

Upcoming releases like King of Pop biopic “Michael,” Ana de Armas-led “John Wick” spinoff “Ballerina,” another “Hunger Games” prequel and “Now You See Me 3” could spark a rebound in fortunes in 2025 and beyond.

NYSM3 should do well if they have a decent script, the Hunger Games prequel should do fine with their hardcore fans, Ballerina is a tricky one (I don't really rate the director that highly) but it does have Keanu in which might save it from bombing and a Michael Jackson biopic seems almost impossible to get right without upsetting a lot of people. So next year's slate should halt the long run of flops but I am unsure it'll be good enough to greatly improve their bottom line.