A century ago, or so it feels, there was a time of pink and fiery atomic orange, when moviegoing turned back into a communal miracle, Hollywood beat the odds and two movies that weren’t sequels to anything opened up against each other and ended up lifting each other’s spirits and profits into the billions.
A new conjoined word — Barbenheimer — ruled the land. And both movies were worth seeing and arguing about, and everybody made some money. The CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, acknowledged that its billion-dollar smash, based on a Mattel doll, wouldn’t lighten its debt load much. But it felt like it should, which counts for something.
Here we are, a year on. Feels longer, and a little … less. The reasons are many, one being the supply-chain disruptions caused by last year’s adventures in capital vs. labor, the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes. Like many recent summer movie seasons, but more so, sequels, reboots and spinoffs rule our screen world. Summer 2024 is the summer of colons or numbers in titles: “Inside Out 2.” The fourth “Bad Boys” movie, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die.” The fourth “Despicable Me.” The seventh “Alien,” not counting the Alien vs. Predator outings.
There are also a few movies coming out, in theaters, between now and Labor Day, without franchises or existing intellectual property behind them. Kevin Costner doubles down with “Horizon: An American Saga,” releasing Chapters 1 and 2 of a Civil War-era drama he co-wrote, directed and designed for a Kevin Costner type to lead the cast. There’s a new take on a fondly remembered children’s book of yore, “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” There’s a live-action Disney drama, originally slated for Disney+ streaming, that has been deemed Good Enough to Play Theaters First: “Young Woman and the Sea,” about Trudy Ederle (played by Daisy Ridley) who in 1926 became the first woman to swim the English Channel.