Overseas Film Sales Are Saving Hollywood From a Terrible Summer
- Rest of world supports love affair with sequels and reboots
- With only North America, ‘it would be a monumental disaster’
Sony Bets on Spider-Man to Come to the Rescue
This article is for subscribers only.
The duds just keep coming this summer in North America, from “The Mummy” to “Alien: Covenant” to “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.” The season has been what critics politely call lackluster for Hollywood studios -- but don’t expect them to stop churning out more bombs.
That’s because as badly as so many franchise films and reboots have done in the world’s biggest cinema market, they’ve racked up solid ticket sales elsewhere. Theater-goers in America thought Paramount Pictures’ fifth “Transformers” was pretty much a yawner, but in China they liked it. And No. 6 is already in the works.