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An unpleasant if soon-to-be distant memory.
The dawning reality that theFast and Furiousfranchise should have ended after 2015sFurious 7?
But in the future, they all will fall away in favor of a single overarching storyline: theBarbenheimerprimacy.
Even if the path to get here has been anything but normal.
There were a lot of uncertainties.
It just goes to show you you cant write off a summer in the middle of the race.
So what have we learned about the new normal in audience behavior?
3did okay at $845 million globally (undershootingGotGVol.
But bothM:I7andFast Xwildly undershot their respective marks.
Theres always going to be franchise fatigue when your films dont stack up to the previous iteration.
Really, these films were not firing on all cylinders.
They were not what audiences expected out of these franchises.
Fast and Furioushas had 11 movies now if you countHobbs & Shaw.
He was the heart and soul of that franchise.
Theyve now made a few movies without him.
And while theyve been mostly successful, theyve seen diminishing returns.
Thats just continued now withFast X.
Calling it aPart Oneis just ridiculous, says Bock.
People were like,Wait a minute, what?
So its not going to tell a complete story like the other ones have?
Nah, Im going to sit this one out.
Whereas I think Paramount thought that would really reel them in.
It did the opposite.
It wasnt even on my radar until it opened on July 4.
That was a profoundly impactful release for this summer.
They didnt want to go see anotherMission: Impossible, he says.
They didnt want to go see anotherIndiana Jones.
They wanted to go see thisSound of Freedommovie that maybe all their peers had been talking about.
Fury of the Gods.
The Flashwas an implosion of the DC shield, says Bock.
It exposed an entire franchise.
If were calling DC an entire franchise, it killed it.
You follow that withBlue Beetle, which grossed $25 million the lowest-grossing DC film of all time?
This was DC imploding by backing the wrong horse.
He adds: It didnt matter if the film was good or not.
People just wanted to hate this film.
