Hollywood Just Had Its Worst Box Office Run In Decades

The entertainment industry is in free fall, and there doesn't seem to be any end in sight.

Hollywood shot itself in the foot over the past decade, with any number of poor, short-sighted decisions, and this summer and fall at the box office has demonstrated, it's come back to bite them. As The New York Times reported, there have been roughly 25 movies released over the past few months that fell into the drama or comedy genre. 

Not one has become a significant hit at the box office. Several have actually been major flops, even with major stars attached. Some of the films the Times referenced include "Die My Love" with Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattison, "After the Hunt" with Julia Roberts, and in the latest example of how internet popularity isn't always enough, "Christy" with Sydney Sweeney.

RELATED: Another Big Budget Disney Movie Flops At The Box Office After Politicized Promo

"Christy," a film starring Sweeney as an almost unrecognizable women's boxer, just dropped roughly 92 percent from its opening weekend box office. That was viewed as the largest single weekend decline in modern box office history. That's concerning for industry executives, considering she's one of the most recognizable and popular public figures. 

But what's even more concerning? This run of failure came after one of the worst summer moviegoing seasons in nearly 45 years. This is a very real and growing problem.

Sydney Sweeney attends FIJI Water at AFI FEST 2025 – "Christy" premiere at TCL Chinese Theatre on October 25, 2025 in Hollywood, California.  (Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for FIJI Water)

Summer Blockbuster Season Fizzles As Hollywood Refuses To Learn Lessons

As the Times covered, the summer movie season, the biggest and most important for the industry, was an unmitigated disaster. The least attended, after adjusting for inflation, of any summertime period since 1981. That's nearly 45 years ago. 

The United States in 1981 also had roughly 110 million fewer people living in it. And there were fewer people at the movies this summer than that year. This is a five-alarm fire for Hollywood, no matter what they say about box office records of reaching certain hurdles of box office revenue year in and year out. 

This October saw just $445 million in total box office. The last pre-COVID October saw roughly $1 billion in ticket sales. What's behind all this, and what can be done to fix it? 

Well, one of the big problems is that Hollywood made itself into a political activist organization. Stars, personalities and creative talent have spent much of the past decade telling more than half the country that they hate them and despise their way of life. That doesn't help. They've prioritized subject matter with miniscule appeal instead of the broad, successful comedies and dramas of the past. 

The COVID lockdowns supported by the industry also decimated moviegoing. Audiences stayed home, waiting for streaming services, instead of buying tickets to go to the theater. Then, in the aftermath, the industry chasing short-term streaming service gains, shortened the window between theatrical releases hitting, say, Disney+. 

That's all created incentives for people to simply wait a few weeks or a month for a non-event movie to hit the internet. So films are losing money at the box office, then hitting streaming where the return on investment is substantially worse for studios. It's a mess. 

One of the biggest factors? Quality has inarguably dropped. 

Marvel Studios, one of the most reliable factories of mid-level entertainment, abandoned its formulas in favor of hitting specific quotients and targets based on political priorities. It backfired, spectacularly. Bomb after bomb followed their about face. Disney animation and Pixar churned out low-quality progressive slop, undermining their hard-won reputations. Now, outside of sequels, most audiences have stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Few cared about superhero movies like "The Fantastic Four: First Steps." 

Now, they're facing a Mt. Everest sized uphill battle to fix the problems they created. New Paramount Studios head David Ellison is working to make more movies like "Top Gun: Maverick" that were targeted to mass audiences and didn't offend them in the process. Disney has removed "DEI" and other divisive references from its corporate business report. 

It's a start. But now that audiences have gotten used to viewing Hollywood as churning out disposable, often unnecessarily political mediocrity, it's going to take years to fix that mentality. If they ever do. And with the least attended summer in decades, it's not moving in the right direction.