Chinese Box office overtakes the US for the first time in February.

http://www.slashfilm.com/chinese-box-office-overtakes-america/?China+Box+Office

We aren't #1 any longer. The ever-growing film industry in China has overtaken the perpetually declining US box office.

But then again Shawn, China has a population that has more than 1 billion more people than the US. We have about 320 million and they are close to 1.4 billion. What took them so long?

Our land masses are roughly the same size. If we dumped a billion people here, our box office would be astronomical in comparison I think.

Pretty amazing, coming from a country that started off with those hilarious kung-fu movies with exaggerated sound fx.

Good.  Maybe Michael Bay will start releasing movies over there first.

GrandNational wrote:

But then again Shawn, China has a population that has more than 1 billion more people than the US. We have about 320 million and they are close to 1.4 billion. What took them so long?

Our land masses are roughly the same size. If we dumped a billion people here, our box office would be astronomical in comparison I think.

China really just started massively developing movie theaters over the past decade. Yes, they have all those people, but up until recently they didn't have nearly enough theaters to go around. It is interesting that both China and Russia are the fastest growing nations for cinema while the US box office continues to decline as people stay home and watch Netflix instead.

Hollywood is out of ideas. The well has been dry for quite some time now. That's why they keep remaking all the old movies with crappy modern actors.

Actually, Hollywood isn't out of ideas, it's the scared-shitless studio heads who won't take a risk on anything but sequels, remakes or reboots that is the real problem.  I have a good friend that works in the script department at one of the major studios, he said good stuff crosses his desk often but he knows it's next to impossible to get a completely original idea green-lit.  Remakes and reboots come with built-in audiences, thus less financial risk to the studio.  Often the studio already owns the property so they don't have to spend money on licensing either.  The studio can take the box office data from the prior version of the film and present that to the stockholders and project fairly accurately how much they anticipate to make.  An all-original idea the public has never seen?  That is a mystery, there is no magic 8-ball prediction other than looking at other similar films within the genre and trying to make an educated guess  

It's an all-around crap situation, but all the studios are owned by major conglomerates like Sony these days, so the only thing they care about is the financial aspect, the artistic aspect is of no concern.

The good movies being produced are smaller, independent productions that sadly get almost no theatrical distribution in the States outside the large cities.

**My prediction is this year will end up being a pretty decent one for US box office. Quite a few high-profile releases like Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, Fast & Furious 7 and the monster that is a new Star Wars movie in December. Yes...they are all friggin' sequels, but hey, they'll make money.

S.D. wrote:

**My prediction is this year will end up being a pretty decent one for US box office.  Quite a few high-profile releases like Avengers: Age of Ultron, Jurassic World, Fast & Furious 7 and the monster that is a new Star Wars movie in December.  Yes...they are all friggin' sequels, but hey, they'll make money.  

You could probably put Fantastic Four in there as well....and maybe Ant-Man will be a big draw.

Fantastic Four is getting a lot of "nerd-rage" because of the casting choices, so that one is a bit risky I believe. Plus, it wasn't produced by Marvel Studios.

Ant-Man I guess we'll have to wait and see. It will either be yet another smash or could possibly end up being Marvel Studios first disappointment. I'm wary of it because the director walked out after working to get it made for 8 years, that could be a warning sign.

Maybe we should stop making prequels, sequels, re imagings, reboots, and movies based on comics and 1970's/ 80's TV shows. This is why I haven't set foot in a theater in 9 years.