The U.S. domestic box office was down 80 percent in 2020:
For the first time ever, China supplanted North America as the world’s top moviegoing market. Yet no country was spared as global box office revenue likely tumbled more than 72 percent, including a 70 percent dip in the Middle Kingdom.
Domestic movie tickets sold between Jan. 1 through Dec. 31 came generated an estimated $2.3 billion compared to $11.4 billion in 2019, according to Comscore estimates. That’s the lowest showing in at least 40 years. The dramatic fall-off was expected, considering that many cinemas have been closed for more than nine months in the U.S.
Globally, 2020 movie ticket sales are expected to come in between $11.5 billion and $12 billion, compared to 2019’s $42.5 billion.
What’s interesting is that no major studios have folded yet. One wonders how much longer they can hold on. The assumption is that people will come back once the theaters open again, but that assumption is not necessarily valid. When people’s habits change, they aren’t always amenable to changing back. Especially when the studios are showing no sign of improving their products. To the contrary, they’re actually getting worse:
Wonder Woman 1984’s scores on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes have fallen to the point that the DC film is now the worst-rated of the Extended Universe. IMDb, an Amazon site, gives it a star rating standing at 5.6 out of 10 with 90,653 user votes. That’s lower than Birds of Prey’s current score of 6.1 and Suicide Squad’s 6.0 score, formerly the lowest scoring DCEU film after over 596k user votes.
Snikker-snakk….