"It's not the film's fault, people just don't go to theaters anymore"

I see the studio bosses and their apologists for this turkey are ALREADY recycling this excuse they used LAST year during the summer of the "flopbuster". You know, all their planned "tentpole" movies that were SUPPOSED to make zillions like The Little Mermaid remake, Indiana Jones 5, Elemental, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Aquaman 2, The Flash, Wish, etc., crashed and burned at the box office.

But, OF COURSE, it couldn't possibly be BECAUSE those movies sucked! NOPE! According to them, the simple solution is "audiences just don't see films at the theater anymore". Culture had changed, "Everyone" is streaming now at home, physical theater attendees are a thing of the past, and the movie itself is simply a VICTIM of those circumstances... blah blah blah...

Unfortunately for them, a month or two later, the "Barbenheimer" phenomena happened and blew their little "theory" out of the water. THOSE films easily SOLD OUT and had record-breaking profits IN THEATERS during their premiere, people who wanted to see them did so AT A THEATER, and didn't "wait for streaming" to check it out. The combined films made over TWO AND A HALF BILLION dollars AT the box office! The Super Mario Bros. movie also came out in 2023, and it also made OVER a billion AT THE BOX OFFICE, being one of only a handful of animated films in the ENTIRE history of cinema to reach that benchmark. Nobody "waited for streaming" to see Mario Bros, it's theatrical release didn't cause ticket sales to nosedive. Hmmm!

Same thing with the box office failures in 2022 and 2021. NOT the movie's fault! Nope, it was due to "Covid" scaring away the public and keep people away from theaters because they didn't feel it was "safe" to go back to watching movies in a large crowd. In 2022: Lightyear, Strange World, Moonfall, Bros, Fantastic Beasts 3, Black Adam, etc., were all poor widdle victims of "Covid" causing people to NOT go see them.

Same thing in 2021: Snake Eyes, The Matrix Resurrections, Space Jam: A New Legacy,
West Side Story failed. OBVIOUSLY "Covid" did it!

But unfortunately, we had the pesky historical facts that Top Gun: Maverick AND Jurassic World Dominion each grossed OVER $1 BILLION in 2022. And Spider-Man: No Way Home made OVER
$1 BILLION in 2021, when it was released DURING the pandemic, it was STILL one of the top 10 highest grossing films OF ALL TIME. Gosh, where was "Covid" then, as audiences packed in theaters DURING a pandemic to go see the film IN PERSON?

These studios will NEVER admit failure or accept resposiblity for putting out a product that audiences DON'T want to see, so they're falling back on their old spin that was already disproven. They can't just admit that audiences aren't interested in seeing a Mad Maxless "Mad Max Saga", so it's all the fault of "streaming". Until, of course, Deadpool and Wolverine is released in a few months, and people will magically show up in a theater again, long AFTER they claimed it was "dead".

Funny how that works!