The summer movie box office could be screwed

nypost.com:

The Fall Guy.”But the crowd, such as it was, looked nothing like the ticket buyers of nearly a year ago when the same A-list duo was part of the cinematic phenomenon known as #Barbenheimer.Remember those three surreal days when the masses, lemming-like, donned pink skirts and roller skates (and, for a sprinkle of nerds, brown fedoras) and packed theaters to capacity to see films about an old doll and a dead physicist?Domestically, that pair of polar opposites “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” grossed a combined $246 million on their opening weekend in July 2023.

They went on to do $2.4 billion in business worldwide. Staggering.That organic explosion of public enthusiasm was a vital life preserver for the movie industry at the time.Like the films or not — I personallyenjoyed the #enheimer half — they were were lucrative must-sees for everybody.Whelp, nine months later, the itsy bitsy “Fall Guy,” the action-comedy starring Blunt and Gosling, grossed a meager $28 million. “Must-see!” has become “Maybe stream?”Barely a firecracker, and far from the momentous kick-off to summer that hobbling Hollywood was hoping for, “Fall” was the first big miss of a season with a worrying lack of sure things on the horizon.Strange to say that about a lineup that includes a Marvel movie, “Mad Max” and Will Smith, but, hey, Harry Hamlin has a cooking show now.

Up is down, down is up.The best shot at boffo success is “Deadpool & Wolverine” (July 26), the third standalone movie for Ryan Reynolds’ curse-spewing anti-hero and the first to bring Hugh Jackman’s X-Man into the overgrown, barely tolerable Marvel Cinematic Universe.But Logan is returning to a changed world.