Waiting for Superman to Leave
Will original films ever again dominate the summer box office?

The summer of 2017 has been one of the best for high-quality franchise films. Wonder Woman delivered the first enthusiastic DC hero, Spider-Man: Homecoming produced the first believably high-school-aged Peter Parker, and people tell me War for the Planet of the Apes was fine. Nevertheless, I wonder: when will we return to a summer that is not bursting at the seams with franchises, sequels, and remakes? Did that summer ever exist?
For some reason, I began to believe that this summer was the one audiences would say, in the immortal words of Jennifer Lopez, “enough.” The success of comedies like The Big Sick and Girls Trip demonstrate that people are hungry for unique stories and diverse perspectives. Baby Driver proved people would show up to an original, high-octane action film (okay, that’s not very surprising). Then Dunkirk entered with a bang, and alongside The Beguiled, I hoped that Hollywood had started to get the message that people can think during the summer, too.
The reality: they haven’t. The fact remains that, as of this writing, nine of the ten highest grossing summer films are not an original property. This summer is also home to Cars 3, Despicable Me 3, Transformers: The Last Knight, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, and an ill-advised remake of The Mummy. If I was this delusional about the landscape of this summer’s movies, maybe I was wrong that there was ever a summer chock-full of original films.
As a reality check, I looked up the top ten highest grossing films for the last twenty summers (1997–2017) on Box Office Mojo. For the sake of full disclosure, the process for determining what was a franchise film was at times difficult. For example, was the first X-Men (2000) a franchise film when it could have bombed and been the last we saw of Ian McKellen in that adorable helmet? I went easy on firsts in a series, but recognize many of my choices were entirely subjective.
I continued tallying remakes, reboots, and sequels. I put the numbers in a little Excel spreadsheet that produced this handsome scatterplot. My Algebra teacher would be proud to see that I also remembered to include a line of best fit.

And there’s a trend! I admit, this is not groundbreaking work, or perfect data. But at least it suggests I’m not crazy for thinking that original summer films are becoming rarer and rarer. Or, more accurately, original summer films exist, but they aren’t earning the amount of money they did in the past.
This should not be surprising. The corporatization of Hollywood has long been documented. Studios, once led by executives who took a chance on making trends, now follows them. In a time when people can stream compelling dramas at home on large HDTVs, many are only convinced to visit a theater if the spectacle is great enough.
It’s not as if original content went away — it simply moved to television. So why am I still bothered?
In truth, it’s partially because I’m exhausted by superhero movies. I say that as a Batman fanatic and someone who still sees all of the movies about which I’m complaining. I’m part of the problem! Yet as the DC and Marvel universes expand, and each new film builds on the last, keeping track of characters and plotlines feels increasingly like homework. Consequently, the idea of going to the theater to enjoy a unique, standalone film seems all the more refreshing.
Most importantly, I’m hoping that theaters can continue to be a place where we see innovation in ideas, not just special effects, year-round. The theater is a sacred space, one of the last where strangers come together for a communal experience. It’s also a place where one can truly watch a film, where the pressure to get the most value from your ticket and basic theater etiquette forces audience members to stop staring at their phones. Or it should, and if you don’t you are a bad person.
We only have ourselves to blame. If The Big Sick sold more tickets than Spider-Man, we’d get more of The Big Sick. But I won’t hold my breath. Greedy corporations will be greedy corporations. The halcyon days of one-off films dominating the summer box office are gone. In the meantime, I will turn to television to fill the void as I eagerly await the arrival of the best season, the season when most great films premiere: fall.
