Definitely, at least in comparison.

If we're just talking about money earned in July, then maybe (but still no as Inside Out and Ted 2 will make a fair share of their money in July).

But if we're talking about total grosses from films released in July, then definitely no, as Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation will make enough over $200m to not label it as a "small hit".

This weekend was a major shot in the arm for 2015.

It's now ahead of each of the last 5 years and that should certainly grow.

And what a list of mega-blockbusters so far....

American Sniper
Fast Seven
Age of Ultron
Jurassic World

With the following still to come...

Inside Out
Minions
Spectre
Mockingjay Pt 2
The Good Dinosaur
SW7 : The Force Awakens

The key to how big of a record breaker this year is will be the mid range blockbusters - the Shades, SpongeBob's, Pitch Perfects, Mad Max', San Andreas' etc

Yeah it looks like $11b will happen.

11.5b is happening guys

Maybe but I don't see that right now.

2015 only needs a 5% increase over 2013. Right now it's 7% ahead and on weekly head to heads I can see 2015 beating 2013 on atleast 80% of the remaining weeks of the year.

So...

It should comfortably beat 2014. But the average ticket price increased 2% from 2014 and 2.5% from 2013. There also appears to be more movies released than in 2013 (the current US currency record holder). So I'm not sure that the "might hit $11b" dialogue is all that promising. Though it will be fun to see an $11b total, even if it is all bullshit and doesn't correctly highlight the trend that people are watching less and less cinema.

Star Wars is single-handedly giving 2015 a much-needed rebound. This year was behind 2012 and 2013 before this weekend, now it's ahead of both of them, and has officially pulled ahead of 2014's entire full year gross with 11 days to spare. Lookin' good...

#2015 bitch really isn't a thing. Outside of Universal's summer movies, Inside Out and TFA, it was a mediocre year.

2015 was all about the highest highs and the lowest low's.

The Top 10 of the calender year are going to look something like which is insane and shows how much the mid range films failed this year (plus a few biggies underachieving - ie. Mockingjay, maybe Bond):


Jurassic World $652,270,625
Star Wars: The Force Awakens $590,000,000
Avengers: Age of Ultron $459,005,868
Inside Out $356,461,711
Furious 7 $353,007,020
American Sniper $348,797,073
Minions $336,045,770
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 $270,438,774
The Martian $225,894,423
Cinderella (2015) $201,151,353

Unfortunately 2012/13 admissions levels wont be surpassed but at least 2011/2014 will be by a good margin.

If all you want to see in your future are:

1. Star Wars Sequel
2. Star Wars Spin Off
3. Marvel Sequel
4. Marvel Debut
5. DC Sequel
6. DC Debut
7. Reboot of 80s/90s franchise
8. Sequel of reboot of 80s/90s franchise
9. Remake of 00s franchise
10. Sequel of reboot of 00s franchise

Making money, and the only money, every year, then, sure #2015bitch exists for you.

It has, however, been a fucking awful year. The amount of absolute lows that were reached, means that the box office is probably more top heavy than ever before, and not just for mid-tier tentpoles and blockbusters, but it's really just mega-blockbusters and not much else.

I have to agree with BK on this one (halfway though as it was a "mixed year" instead of an awful year imo). 2015 was supposed to be a SLAM dunk for greatly surpassing $11 B. It's going to limp past. 44% of the market was dominated by Universal/Disney movies which is by far a new record by a mile from previous dominance. Paramount, WB, LG, Sony have serious issues to sort out which will impact the health of the industry.

#2015blah still stands because the overall market is not healthy I think if many of the mid-tier movies are floundering. Franchise movies will get commoditized eventually and storm clouds are brewing already.

$170 m drop in the Avengers, $70 m drop in the Hunger Games, $100 m drop in James Bond, $100 m Pixar movie (I'm hoping it was a fluke and not a sign of things to come so thank goodness for Inside Out). November was incredibly underwhelming so SW is picking up the pace on those films. But 2015 definitely has demonstrated some issues that really make this a mixed year.

Yeah mixed is the right word I'd use to describe this year. Outside of the franchise films and a few mid-tier breakouts 2015 just wasn't as strong as it looked on paper. Hell, even some of the thought to be reliable franchise films disappointed, but thank god for SW for picking up the slack huh ? I'm also still disappointed this year won't cross 1.4B in ticket sales despite two monstrous $600M+ grossers and four other $300M+ films. This is the definition of a top heavy year.

But then again you are only talking about breakouts. The industry doesn't always depend on those. These are breakouts yes but have you seen the list of worst openings this year? I remember in Top 20 there are about 5-6 movies this year with VF topping the list. Yeah I know these are unappealing but the audience are only accepting blockbusters and WoM is only driven for similar movies. The money is not being spread across movies (and I simply cannot say that everything is unappealing).

For example The Martian succeeded but The Walk completely failed. Its like the former took out the gas from that later and there are MANY MANY cases like this. There are always over-performers in an year but this year feels more heavy on disappointment where the slack is being picked up by uber-blockbusters. That is really not healthy for the industry.

Let's remember how we defined #2015blah all year. It wasn't a re-haul of the tallies of the year or the unpredictability, it was growth of the overall year to greatly surpass all other years by miles. There are big red flags that leave this as a mixed year imo.

Just a refresher from Feb. 16:



Let's not forget that in this thread, we were talking about $11.5 B+ post Jurassic World. Then the box office floundered overall and lost a lot of the momentum it had. I'm not saying your last observation isn't completely true, but we are LIMPING past $11 B here. Top heavy, 2/7 studio driven studio films is not healthy for the overall film industry. It's going to lead to more commoditization of product.

July was 7th biggest, August was 10th biggest. Nov. was 9th biggest. The rest of the year was well rounded for top 3 performances for monthly grosses. But the underperformance of July/Aug/Nov is a big, big red flag IMO that mid-tier films used to help fill when big tentpoles would underperform. Without them, I think there are some big craters.

Magnus is right about overachievers making up for some of the underachievers.

Though I also agree with what you are saying O.

The thing is - at the end of 2014 - on paper 2015 was looking good for $11b IMO and that would have represented a strong rebound over 2014 and brought the year back to 2012/2013 levels.

Expectations became more OPTIMISTIC after the first 6 months because Sniper/Furious/Inside Out/Jurassic all majorly over-achieved (and hell Avengers made $460m which regardless of expectations - mighty impressive). Then you had the other milder breakouts - Mad Max, Picture Perfect, 50SOG, Home, San Andreas, Spongebob etc.

The BO was on fire and we still had biggies like Minions, MI5, Compton, Spectre, Good Dinosaur, Peanuts, Hunger Games and offcourse Star Wars. Add in a slew of great looking fall films and $11.3-5b was a realistic target.

But it essentially all fell apart after the JW/IO double act.

Then as we got to the fall (Sept/Oct were strong on aggregate) - a glut of adult pics cannobolised each other while SW7 on the horizon cast its shadow over the BO (I believe the non regular moviegoers who would have been counted to add another $20-$30m to Spectre and/or Mockingjay - just didnt bother as SW7 was the one with the most urgency.

Regardless, its been a fantastic unpredictable year at the box office. Yes its top heavy and yes there wer emany more outright bombs than recent years - but to match 2012/2013 is atleast encouraging for the industry which has something more ominous to contend with - the rise and rise of must see binge worthy TV. That i believe impacted the smaller/mid range films this year and last and will continue to dent the overall BO.

Time will tell.

And yeah this is probably why i dont do hashtags