Despite a year of environmental catastrophe with hurricanes, floods and wildfires, Hollywood failed to sell audiences on films depicting climate change or global warming.
As the Washington Times reports, the public didn’t seem to care that much about the looming environmental disaster in which so much of Hollywood’s liberal elite so fervently believe.
Movies like “Blade Runner 2049,” “Geostorm,” “Downsizing,” “An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” and “Mother” grossed far below their expectations.
Even the much-anticipate sequel to former Vice President Al Gore’s dubious documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” hardly made a box office dent. Even with all the free publicity from rapturous reviews and celebrity-endorsements from the usual liberal suspects, “An Inconvenient Sequel” earned only $3 million as compared to the original’s $24 million.
Even if one didn’t not expect much from a documentary, this year’s environmental thrillers didn’t do much for the bottom line. “Geostorm,” the Washington Times notes, only brought in $33 million after a production budget that is believed to be as high as $120 million. It was a blockbuster that didn’t materialize.
Documentaries rarely make serious coin at the box office, but the drop was massive.
It was the same story for other films that laid environmental eggs, such as “Downsizing” and “Blade Runner 2049.”
Why couldn’t Hollywood get the public hot and bothered about global warming?
Justin Haskins, executive director of the Heartland Institute, said it’s merely a case of manufacturing a product for a market that can’t sustain it. He says Hollywood producers just don’t get it.
“They believe climate change will bring people to the movies,” Haskins told the Washington Times. “That’s wildly out of touch with how moviegoers feel about the issue.”