2014 has been a jam-packed year of blockbusters, with the top two films to date, “The LEGO Movie” and “Captain America: The Winter Soldier”, each grossing more than $250 million. But we’re now five months in and not a single release has had an opening weekend of over $100 million. “X-Men: Days of Future Past”, “The Amazing Spider-Man 2”, “Godzilla” and “Capt. America” all debuted between $91 and $95 million. It’s the first time there hasn’t been a $100M+ opening in January-May since 2011, a year when overall box office was down, and no film was able to reach the $400M mark (last year, we had three).
Why hasn’t anyone been able to get to $100M so far this year? There are plenty of possible reasons. Here are my Top 3:
1) Too many Spring/early Summer blockbusters. With nearly a big-budget superhero/action coming-out nearly every week fans have been skipping some and waiting for others, so the ticket sales are being spread-out over more movies.
2) Fewer people are spending the extra dollars to see these movies in 3D and IMAX, bringing the average ticket price and total grosses down.
3) The films just haven’t been good enough.
This streak of no $100M films in 2014 will likely come to an end in just a few weeks, when “How to Train Your Dragon 2” opens nationwide. The DreamWorks sequel is one of the favorites right now to win the 2014 Box Office title, but still may not get to $400M. If that’s the case it could mean that 2014 will end-up being an overall down year for the industry.