In fact, the total number of tickets sold has been slipping ever since the peak year of 2002 (1.58 billion tickets).
The current weekend is a pretty good snapshot of the year as a whole. "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" topped the charts for a third straight weekend with an estimated $50 million (for a total of more than $400 million domestic to date). That made it 2016's second highest-grossing film, surpassing "Captain America: Civil War."
Looking at these movies, as well as the rest of the year, it becomes easier to find trends amid the box office confusion of 2016 and declare some clear winners and losers.
WINNERS:
Disney scored four billion-dollar movies and six of this year's ten biggest domestic hits. Not everything worked, but the big smashes were more than big enough to make up for the extravagant flops -- sorry not sorry, "Alice Through the Looking Glass" and "The BFG."
The largest chunk of that change came from China ($221 million), a market whose taste in movies is now, arguably, more important than Americans' taste as far as determining which films Hollywood greenlights. Of course, if President-elect Trump goes all protectionist on trade with China, that country may respond by limiting Hollywood imports, which would mean fewer "Warcrafts" getting made. A win-win for everybody!
LOSERS:
Same was true for some uninspired remakes, including "Ghostbusters," "Ben-Hur," and "Pete's Dragon." None of this is going to stop the studios from betting the farm on sequels: they're still easier to market than unfamiliar original titles, and they're still likely to make money if they're done right. A big "if," to be sure.
But even quality, star-driven movies can be a tough sell. Meryl Streep pulled in just $27 million for "Florence Foster Jenkins." Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal haven't been able to propel "Nocturnal Animals" past the $10 million mark. Jury's still out on Denzel Washington's "Fences," which has made just $33 million in three weeks but has yet to go into wide release. After tireless promotion by stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, three-week-old "La La Land" is the biggest limited-release hit of the year, but even that amounts to only about $37 million so far.
Meanwhile, sausage fests like "The Nice Guys," "War Dogs," "Dirty Grandpa," and the current "Assassin's Creed" and "Why Him?" all had a hard time drawing dudes to the theater.
Maybe guys stayed home this weekend to watch college football playoffs, or maybe there just wasn't anything on that menu as compelling as watching Felicity Jones fight the empire in "Rogue One."
