HOLLYWOOD BOX OFFICE HEADED FOR DISASTER

Numerous stories are beginning to appear on the sad state of this year's box office.  This comes as no surprise for the simple reason that the Hollywood system is broken.  At a certain point several years ago, Hollywood made the strategic decision to abandon original concepts and concentrate solely on remakes, sequels, and pre-sold properties taken from other media -- books, comics, games.  This strategy worked well initially with A-list franchises like "Lord Of The Rings", "Harry Potter", and "SpiderMan", resulting in record box office grosses; but now that Hollywood has burned through many of the A-list titles, it is being forced to rely more and more on less popular B and C-list properties that cannot possibly perform as well.  At the same time, it has become institutionally incapable of creating original movies and cannot go back to that point, and as such, faces the inevitable prospect of a long and slow erosion at the box office.

That's not to say that Star Wars won't be huge this summer, but Hollywood gets none of that money, and sure, they're trying to resurrect Batman and Superman again, but how many times you can that work?  War of the Worlds, King Kong, how many titles like these are there?  Not enough, and they are running out of them.

Hollywood Worries As Decline Continues -- NY Times

Hollywood's Box Office FlameOut -- CNN