12. The Fault in Our Stars
Love Story for the Instagram generation. John Green’s heartbreaking novel about love between teenager cancer patients was a publishing sensation. Nevertheless, it was a ballsy move by Fox to release it in the height of the summer. Their strategy paid off: it eclipsed Edge of Tomorrow on its opening weekend, finally earning $124m.
That fact that another low-budget film has performed so well this summer, while so many mega-budget giants have fallen (Fault only cost $12m to make) should hopefully lead to a sea-change in Hollywood thinking at accountancy-level.
11. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Hands up all of us who thought that this was the stupidest idea of the year! How could there still be any appetite left for one of the least-fondly remembered phenomena of the late 1980s (discuss). I didn’t give it a cat in hell’s chance but TMNT’s $65m opening weekend was one of the biggest August openings in history. The sequel was green-lit the following Monday. Turtle power indeed.
Great summary of the summer. I am not sure why opinions were SO mixed on Godzilla. I thought it was EASILY the best Godzilla movie of all time. I mean have the complainers actually seen any of the source material? The new Godzilla was The Godfather comparatively. Apes, Xmen and Guardians were my other favs of the summer. Disappointing though Michael Bay will be reinforced to make more Transformers of the same ilk. T4 was the worst. I liked Revenge of the Fallen better for goodness sake. Yet it still made a billion globally so another one is on the way. I mean, Optimus easily flying at the end kind of defeats the purpose of a lot of the crap from the first three doesn’t it? Sigh…..
I hear tell that Michael Bay is handing the reins to another director for Tran5formers. It would be nice if they gave it to Lars Von Trier to play with but I suspect that Louis Leterrier is already on the phone to Hasbro. Thanks for the comments