Hollywood sequels struggling at box office, as genres are spread too thin

Sure things in Hollywood are beginning to look like an endangered species.

Sequels, for years the industry’s most “can’t miss” assets, are struggling at the box office this year. The downturn, which continued over the weekend with the low turnout for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, calls into question one of the industry’s bedrocks of bankability.

Roughly two decades ago, the sequel – once largely seen as a blatant and disrespected cash grab – threw off its stigma. Comic-book serials and long-running franchises stretched the sequel business into a new realm of round-the-clock production and box-office records.

That era is nowhere close to ending; the most popular franchises have plans in place to last the next three presidential elections. But the recent sequel slump suggests that Hollywood may have become too quick on the sequel trigger – that maybe not every profitable movie deserves a second chapter, that the world might not have been craving another Ninja Turtles or Zoolander.

No studio executive today could get away with not ordering up a sequel to a US$1 billion-grossing movie like 2010’s Alice in Wonderland. Yet the drop was staggering for the badly reviewed Alice Through the Looking Glass, which has made just US$51.4 million domestically in three weeks.