It's Official: The Summer Box Office Sucks

It was only a matter of time, and now that time has come. The 2017 summer box office season has mercifully come to an end, and the results pretty much lived down to expectation. Over the Labor Day weekend, the top twelve grossing films managed about $51.5 million, which is the worst in 17 years. In all, the summer session ended with $3.8 billion in ticket sales, the lowest in over a decade and down a precipitous 14.6% from 2016.

Of course, someone had to finish first, and for the third week in a row that distinction went to The Hitman's Bodyguard, which added $13.2 million to its haul for a domestic cume of $58 million. In second, Warner/New Line's Annabelle: Creation continued its surprisingly good run, scaring up another $9.2 million for a twenty-five day total of $91 million on a production budget of just $15 million. Warner Bros. also enjoyed another strong weekend from summer champion Wonder Woman. With an additional $2.5 million added to its total of nearly $410 million, Wonder Woman has now become the fifth highest grossing superhero movie of all time, topped only by the two Avenger and two Dark Knight movies. Also of note, the 40th Anniversary re-release of Close Encounters of the Third Kind brought in $2.2 million on about 2,000 screens. The lifetime gross for Close Encounters stands at just over $134 million.

PageBreaks Take: If ever a movie was in a position to enjoy a tsunami of pent-up box office demand, it is IT. The much anticipated Warner Bros. adaptation of the Stephen King classic will open on over 4,000 screens on September 9th. Preliminary tracking suggests a record-breaking September bow, which might be enough to scare away any lingering nightmares from a horrific summer.