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Sadly, this trend does not appear to be changing for the upcoming year, but 2015 has the advantage of sequels that people actually want to see such as The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. Conversely, the follow-ups from the summer of 2014 included such disappointments as Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, an unmitigated disaster, and the afore-mentioned Spider-Man sequel that earned $60 million less domestically than any prior Spidey title. While many analysts are quick to dismiss the woes of 2014, especially the summer, as anomalous, the underlying reasons for the behavior are troubling. An entire generation of teens who are historically the money demographic for Hollywood over the past century has been indoctrinated into new technology. Streaming has been their way of life for years now, which means they don’t have the same loyalty to theaters that people born before 1995 once did. Similarly, Hollywood’s monetary obsession with international revenue has created a firewall against most ambitious original concepts. With sequels too prevalent in the marketplace, consumers are less incentivized to visit the theater. As an example, the hugely derivative Transformers: Age of Extinction experienced a box office drop of over $100 million in North America, and part of the explanation is that the film was more difficult to market because it was so clearly made for Chinese consumers. Illustrating this point is the fact that Li Bingbing was thrust into the cast even though her grasp of the English language is a work in progress. These trends will be ignored in 2015, because a majestic slate of movies should trigger a banner year for box office revenue. The issues that ruined 2014 are not going away, though. Don’t be surprised if the dissipating ticket sales that occurred this past year become the trend moving forward with 2015 becoming the exception and the past year the rule.
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