2017 US box office suffered worst ticket sales in 25 years

The box office in the US suffered its worst year for ticket sales since 1992, it has emerged.

Data from Box Office Mojo shows that 1.239 billion tickets to the movies were sold last year, which also represents a six percent drop in revenue from last year’s annual total.

It compares to more than 1.4 billion tickets sold in 2007.

The US box office made just over $11 billion in all, compared with $11.3 billion in 2016, with the ongoing increase in ticket prices the most likely reason for the fall in numbers.

That can also be combined with the rapid growth in streamable home entertainment content from providers like Netflix and Amazon.

“Audiences are continuing to flock to streaming in droves for challenging content and that doesn’t look to change in 2018, or the near future,” Jeff Bock, a leading movie analyst, told Business Insider.

“The studios are up against the wall, and the next few years they’ll have to produce a plethora of quality films to win back favour with audiences.

“Studios are lagging behind for the very simple reason that they are relying on retreads and reboots, and most of those aren’t being well received.”

Indeed, a raft of massive budget blockbuster movies last year failed to perform as expected, including the first in Universal’s planned ‘dark universe’ series The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, and Transformers: The Last Knight.

Movies like Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Blade Runner 2049 and Manga remake Ghost In The Shell also performed badly.

But some studios are beginning to take more notice of the need to harness streaming rather than simply sell on their content, with Disney set to launch its own streaming service in the near future.

It’s thought that other studios could also follow suit.

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