Have you heard the word on the street, that comedy movies are dead? Long live comedy movies.
Though everyone likes to laugh, evidently not everyone is quite so keen to cough up their hard-earned bucks to watch a comedy movie these days.
For decades, comedies have been among the most low-risk, reliably successful films at the box office, yet in recent times that just hasn’t held true.
Legendary comedy producer Judd Apatow knows it better than anyone, with recent reports emerging than even a filmmaker as successful as he is struggling to get new projects off the ground in the current Hollywood climate.
But with comedy being among the broadest and most seemingly accessible of genres for the masses, what exactly is going on?
There isn’t any single, overpowering reason for this decline, but rather the unfortunate combination of numerous shifts in the industry and audience habits, which collectively have wildly devalued the comedy’s place in the cinematic sphere.
And so, it’s time for a deep dive into everything that’s going wrong for comedies on the big screen right now, and if there’s any possibility of them ever making a comeback…
Though it’s impossible to ignore the impact that the pandemic has had on the kinds of movies people will leave the house to see, things were already trending in the wrong direction for comedies before COVID had its say.
Take 2019’s Booksmart, which despite scoring rave reviews grossed just $25 million – a mere fraction of the $170 million grossed by the 2007 film it was endlessly compared to, Superbad.
This is just one example of course, but the pandemic really only exacerbated a growing audience disinterest in anything but huge, splashy Event Movies, which has arguably done a bigger number on comedies than any other genre.
With comedies typically being among the least spectacle-driven of all film genres, they’re rarely a top choice for a night out at the movies today, especially with global inflation hurting the wallets of many and theatrical windows shrinking down considerably since the pandemic.
If you can just wait 17-45 days to watch a comedy at home for a fraction of the overall cost, it’s easy to see why so many won’t head out to see them anymore.
As such, box office analysts basically lose their minds when a comedy does even remotely good business – say, No Hard Feelings netting almost $90 million last year, or Anyone But You recently pulling in well over $200 million.
Even so, it’s telling that both of these films were rom-coms rather than pure comedies, and it appears that the overwhelming majority of hit comedies today are tethered to another genre, whether romance or action (The Lost City), or a name IP like Barbie or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Another problem with straight-up comedies is that they famously don’t make much money internationally due to the language barrier and cultural differences, which combined with the lackluster domestic box office right now, makes gimmick-free comedy vehicles a depressingly risky bet.