This was the question posed by Business Insider this week. Citing the poor critical reception of the just-released The Last Knight - not to mention less than stellar reviews of the prior entries to the series, along with diminishing domestic box office numbers, why do the sequels keep getting pushed forward? The answer to this is probably not a surprise to those who've been following along closely, but the article contains a series of charts that help to lay out the situation very clearly. Keep reading for more info and a link to the original post!
The theory presented by Business Insider is one that some of us have already realized: These movies are more and more being made with a dependency on the international audience, rather than just at home in the US. Age of Extinction is represented as having a distinctly lower box office take than its predecessor, Dark of The Moon in domestic ticket sales - over $100 million less. That's a pretty large proportion when jumping from $352 million to $245 million. But the worldwide box office numbers have a much smaller proportionate decline, dropping from $1.12 billion to $1.1 billion. However, Age of Extinction is indicated to have the highest international ticket sales of the entire series at over $858 million, versus $771 million for DOTM, with China contributing heavily to that total. So what does it mean? Well, it depends on how the final tally for The Last Knight bears out, but if it stays in the ballpark, we're probably looking at a situation where the US domestic box office numbers really become more of a bonus to the series than a crucial score. And as long as the worldwide movie going audience keeps buying tickets at the same pace, we'll probably have many more sequels ahead regardless of the opinions of critics.
Read the full article at Business Insider.