This summer was a disappointing season for the box office.
Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy was the top selling film with 913 million tickets sold, but was 4 million tickets short of the highest-grossing films from the past few years.
In 2013, Iron Man 3 led with 1.3 billion tickets sold; summer 2012 had Marvel’s The Avengers with 1.5 billion tickets sold.
Newer and more frequent movie and TV show releases from Netflix could account for the box office slump.
In fact, Netflix has recently expanded into six European countries: France, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Austria and Switzerland. It has recently announced its plans to expand into Australia in 2015.
“I think it has more to do with the fact that no good movies came out this year,” sophomore Amelia Lindsey said.
Indeed, some highly anticipated movies underperformed at the box office and on ratings site Rotten Tomatoes.
For instance, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles received a 19 out of 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and pulled in only $188 million in the U.S.
According to Entertainment Weekly, this July 4 was the worst at the box office since 1999. (However, it is worth noting that the Entertainment Weekly figure has not been adjusted for inflation.)
It is important to note that, in the words of Forbes’s David Gonzales, “It’s impossible to argue that this summer’s box office metrics mean nothing, but they’re more a sign of the rapid diversification of our cinematic media than … a doomsday scenario for the industry.”