Moviegoers not buying Hollywood's summer reruns
Hollywood executives lately have been suffering sleepless nights, queasy stomachs, profuse sweating and bouts of incontinence.
No one seems to have correctly diagnosed what ails them, which is odd because the malady isn't difficult to pinpoint. Even without a medical degree, I can do it without a single invasive procedure.
Studio officials are suffering from massive moviegoer indifference, a condition triggered by a startling lack of originality in many recent releases.
Domestic movie grosses have declined for 18 consecutive weekends, the longest slump on record. This is perplexing only until you realize that, in one form or another, people already have seen most of last weekend's top money-makers.
Consider:
Perhaps the box office slump will end this weekend, with the revenues expected from the latest Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise blockbuster, "War of the Worlds," which opened nationwide Wednesday.
If the title sounds familiar, that's because the thriller is based loosely on the 1953 film of the same name and the 1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast, both of which were adapted from the 1898 H.G. Wells novel.
I'm tempted to say Hollywood's problems are reminiscent of the old Yogi Berra saying, "This is like deja vu all over again." But that line has been used countless times, and I doubt the discerning reader would finish reading a column containing such derivative material.
