The dearth has added to what has already been a troubled year for Hollywood. The summer season – filled with fantasies and science-fiction sequels – was the least attended since 1981, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the Covid-19 pandemic years.

Here is what you need to know.

What constitutes a hit?

While success at the box office is always correlated to how much it costs to make a film, Hollywood has historically used US$50 million ($89m) in ticket sales (over an entire run) as a benchmark for a “widely seen” drama or comedy.

By that measure, After the Hunt, with Roberts playing a college professor combating cancel culture, is a catastrophe. It cost an estimated US$70m to make and collected US$3.3m in the United States and Canada after playing for a month.

Kiss of the Spider Woman, starring Jennifer Lopez and Diego Luna, cost roughly US$30m and managed only US$1.6m in ticket sales over a month.

What movies are succeeding?

Franchise films are chugging along. Predator: Badlands, the ninth instalment in a 38-year-old series, collected US$40m across one weekend, about 30% better than analysts had predicted. (It cost US$105m to make.) Horror flicks like Weapons and anime offerings like Infinity Castle have also attracted sizable audiences.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, an action movie with elements of comedy, has taken in US$70m after seven weeks of release.

That said, the box office is hurting as a whole. Theatres in the United States and Canada collected US$445m across all titles in October, the lowest total on record, after adjusting for inflation and excluding 2020, when the pandemic darkened screens.

For context, October ticket sales in 2019 totalled an adjusted US$1 billion, according to Comscore.

Haven’t dramas and comedies been struggling for a while?

Yes. What’s different now is the sheer volume of misfires – and the number of major stars involved. Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Dwayne Johnson, Roberts, Channing Tatum, Jennifer Lopez, Austin Butler, Keanu Reeves, Lawrence, Pattinson, Emma Stone, Sweeney and Russell Crowe have all failed to fill seats (to varying degrees) over the past three months.

“It has seriously begun to look like the bottom is falling out,” Owen Gleiberman, chief film critic for Variety, the entertainment trade news outlet, wrote last week.

What decimated these genres?

During the pandemic, Hollywood largely ended the long-held practice of giving theatres an exclusive window of about 90 days to show new movies. Instead, movies started to become available for digital rental or purchase after as little as 17 days.

This diminished the incentive to see movies in theatres – especially dramas and comedies, which play just fine on living room TVs.

Frustrated theatre owners have lately been trying to persuade studios to backtrack, perhaps changing the 17-day policy to something closer to 45 days. The effort has gone nowhere, although talks are continuing.

How have movie companies responded?

There’s a lot of finger-pointing:

It’s the audience’s fault. Americans love to complain about a deluge of superhero sequels and big-budget fantasies. And what do they do when a bunch of dramas arrive? They ignore them.

It’s the news media’s fault for reporting on opening-weekend box office grosses; films are declared dead before they have a chance to find their footing.

Theatres are at fault for raising prices and bombarding audiences with ads and trailers before films start.

Quality matters, right?

It sure doesn’t appear that way.

Critics raved about Die My Love, about a woman slipping into madness. It debuted in eighth place last weekend, with about US$2.8m in domestic ticket sales. Mubi, a streaming service and film distributor, paid US$24m for the rights.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere received mostly positive reviews yet stalled at the domestic box office with about US$21m in ticket sales. It cost US$55m to make.

Reeves headlined the well-reviewed comedy Good Fortune, which cost an estimated US$30m. It has collected about US$16.3m after nearly a month in release.

The list goes on (Bugonia) and on (The Smashing Machine).

Could some of these duds become hits on streaming?

Yes, especially if they receive attention from the coming Golden Globes and Academy Awards.

This is why some studios contend that ticket sales (at least for certain kinds of films) are no longer an informative measuring stick for success or failure (eventual profit or loss). The same companies refuse to disclose digital revenue, however.

If ticket sales for dramas are so bad, why do studios keep trying?

The worry is that they won’t. Some of these films come from indie distributors that operate on a knife’s edge in the best of times.

But movies that completely bypass theatres are not eligible for the best picture prize at the Academy Awards. Studios very much want to remain eligible.

And hope never dies in the casino that is Hollywood. Sooner or later, a drama will hit at the box office, renewing optimism. Keep an eye on Chloe Zhao’s heart-rending Hamnet, which begins its run in New Zealand theatres on January 15, and Marty Supreme, a Christmas drama starring Timothée Chalamet as a 1950s table tennis player.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Written by: Brooks Barnes

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