After a failure to launch last weekend, summer movie season looks to finally take off with the return of an acclaimed blockbuster sci-fi franchise. Will it be enough?
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Following Matt Reeves’ magnificent trilogy-ending War for the Planet of the Apes from 2017, Kingdom picks up the story 300 years later with a brand new cast of characters and whole new planet over which the apes have come to rule. Playing as essentially a legacy sequel, the film looks to be the rare example of that category overcoming recent audience disinterest in previously successful franchise revivals.
In the pandemic era and with the rise of streaming coinciding with huge leaps in home entertainment technology and big-screen TVs at affordable prices, viewers are more selective in where their shrinking theatrical dollars go. Due to staying home for several months and being fed a steady diet of top-tier streaming series and films, alongside day-and-date streaming availability of new theatrical releases, audience miss theaters a lot less than everyone expected.
Add in reluctance to fully trust big public gatherings full of people eating and drinking and coughing without masks, and it’s not surprising audiences are going to reserve their ticket buying for proven things and in the biggest theater possible (thus continued lack of enough premium theaters to meet demand).
2024 is expected to be such a weak year, studios pulled a lot of releases from the calendar. Likewise, studio refusal to make a deal with the Hollywood guilds needlessly delayed and shut down the entire industry for months, resulting in less completed movies to release.
