Before summer is over and we go back to wearing jackets and body warmers, we should a pay a visit to the summer movie business and it did the last few months. Hollywood had a decent summer movie season, though most of the record-breaking releases incidentally came from the same studio, but still there were some major disappointments too.
LOSER: “Pixels”
Things were actually looking good for this CGI-fueled comedy starring Adam Sandler. But right after its release, not even classic arcade characters from 1980s could help.
The film turned out to be a dud to put on Sandler’s filmography. The film has only grossed $156 million worldwide and has a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes.
WINNER: “Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation”
There was no doubt that Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation wouldn’t win the summer movie battle after the heart wrenching stunt Tom Cruise pulled off in the trailer of the movie.
LOSER: “Tomorrowland”
After all it turned out that having a big actor in the movie doesn’t insure its success. Though Tomorrowland had George Clooney as its star and a plot shrouded in mystery, the story of a man and teen whiz kid attempting to return to a futuristic world in the hopes of saving the present turned out not to be interesting enough to grab a mass audience.
Now that we have seen what movies have won (or lost) independently, it’s time we move on to the bigger picture i.e. the studios of Hollywood.
WINNER: Universal
Without a superhero franchise on its summer slate, few could imagine Universal would be at the top of the heap at the global box office and no one saw this coming, it’s like Universal blind-sided everyone into a trap.
But it turned out that the studio had some great titles lined up for the summer movie season including “Furious 7”, “Jurassic World”, and “Minions”. Just by their name they gathered a lot of mass appeal.
Universal made more than $5.52 billion at the worldwide box office, which it takes at the top of the highest grossing year for studios.
WINNER: Marvel
Though it’s becoming an old hat of Marvel Studios continued this year with the release of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man.
Ultron alone made $1.4 billion and Ant-Man made a good $350 million worldwide.
While Marvel Studios may be at top for some years now, we might see some change next year with the releases of the pre-summer Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the summer movie Suicide Squad.
LOSER: Sony
The studio coming out of the summer with the most bruises is indefinitely Sony.
With disappointments like Pixel, and Aloha, not to mention Chappie earlier this year, the studio’s top-grossing domestic film is still a title released in April: Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 which has made more than $71 million to date in the US.
Though Sony will surely rebound this year with the releases of sure-fire hits The Walk and the next James Bond movie, Spectre