{"id":35410,"date":"2026-08-09T23:57:25","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T18:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=35410"},"modified":"2026-08-09T23:57:25","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T18:57:25","slug":"the-blockbuster-mentality-is-back-baby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=35410","title":{"rendered":"The Blockbuster Mentality Is Back, Baby!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tThe suits of Hollywood are used to big numbers. That\u2019s how they roll. But the record-setting opening weekend of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/t\/spider-man-brand-new-day\/\" id=\"auto-tag_spider-man-brand-new-day\" data-tag=\"spider-man-brand-new-day\">Spider-Man: Brand New Day<\/a>\u201d isn\u2019t something that happens every day, or every year \u2014 more like once a decade. Domestically, the film enjoyed the biggest opening weekend in movie history. And while it had to take No. 2, behind \u201cAvengers: Endgame,\u201d when it came to international grosses, it\u2019s still a staggering fact to consider that \u201cBrand New Day\u201d made nearly $1 billion, the benchmark of triumph for any contemporary blockbuster\u2026<em>in just 72 hours<\/em>. It now has a chance to become the first movie <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/box-office\/spiderman-brand-new-day-box-office-near-record-second-weekend-1236830807\/\">to hit $1 billion domestically<\/a>, and the first to reach $3 billion globally. These aren\u2019t just numbers that stun and dazzle, that inspire a studio\u2019s board members to order cases of Krug. These are numbers to get high on, to shoot up on.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>You may ask: How could the blockbuster mentality be\u00a0<em>back<\/em>\u2026if it never went away? Let\u2019s just say that the blockbuster mentality waxes and wanes. The key word in the phrase is not, of course, blockbuster. It\u00ad\u2019s\u00a0<em>mentality<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a set of thoughts and attitudes and impulses that coalesce into a state-of-mind that supremely prioritizes the making of ginormous-grossing motion pictures.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>The blockbuster mentality has a rational side. Hollywood is a business, and that business is successful when movies become huge hits. That\u2019s been true since the dawn of the film industry. But the blockbuster mentality also has an\u00a0<em>irrational\u00a0<\/em>side, an irrational exuberance. I would liken it to the experience described by addicts of the first time they get high on crack cocaine. Many have said that that first high is the greatest sensation of their lives, and they have a compulsion to keep chasing it. And that, in its way, is the feeling that was launched 50 years ago by \u201cJaws\u201d and \u201cStar Wars.\u201d Flash forward, and it\u2019s the feeling the opening weekend of \u201cBrand New Day\u201d can give you.\u00a0<em>$1 billion in 72 hours<\/em>. A number like that can become a fix the industry never stops chasing.\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>The Hollywood we know has been built on blockbusters, on sequels and franchises, on IP, on corporate escapist popcorn. And in 2026, a business that looked, for a few years there, like it might be enduring an existential meltdown (COVID, the streaming revolution, the strikes of 2023) appears to have ascended into a triumphant recovery mode. We should all celebrate that.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>But here\u2019s the danger. The blockbuster mentality as we know it kicked in during the late \u201970s, and after 10 years of it, around the time Tim Burton\u2019s \u201cBatman\u201d opened (launching the age of comic-book domination), there was a widespread feeling that movies, creatively, had been squeezed dry. It\u2019s some kind of karmic poetic timing that \u201cBatman\u201d opened on June 23, 1989, and \u201cSex, Lies, and Videotape\u201d opened less than two months later, on Aug. 18, heralding the rise of the independent-film revolution that would rescue the movie industry, much as the New Hollywood had two decades before. The indie movement meant that the blockbuster mentality would now co-exist with a different mentality.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>In many ways, we\u2019re at a comparable inflection point. As a business, Hollywood has come back. \u201cThe Odyssey\u201d is part of that \u2014 but there\u2019s only one Christopher Nolan. The more telling success is that of the insurrectionary one-two indie-horror punch of \u201cObsession\u201d and \u201cBackrooms.\u201d They point the way to a whole new echelon of artistic energy, coming from outside sources (like YouTube) and from a new generation.<br \/>\u00a0<br \/>But if movies are to have a future, that generation needs to be served, and it can\u2019t be served \u2014 and movies can\u2019t thrive \u2014 based, simply, on the blockbuster mentality. The jackpot juggernaut of \u201cBrand New Day\u201d has given us amnesia about comic-book-movie fatigue; but you\u2019d better believe it will be back. What\u2019s needed now, more than ever, are studio executives who can serve the imperatives of the blockbuster mentality without getting fatally high on it \u2014 without forgetting that their job isn\u2019t simply to make blockbusters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-margin-lr-auto  lrv-a-font-body-m   \">\n\tSony Pictures, the company that released \u201cBrand New Day,\u201d is headed by Tom Rothman, who understands the blockbuster mentality but is also one of the last of the old-guard Hollywood executives with a track record of backing great movies that are works of popular art (like \u201cTitanic\u201d and \u201cMoulin Rouge!\u201d and \u201cOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood\u201d). Will the next generation of studio heads respect and preserve the balance of those two priorities? Let\u2019s hope so. It\u2019s likely that the blockbuster mentality will continue to produce hits. But what it won\u2019t produce are movies that do more than simply entertain us \u2014 movies that show us the uncanny depths of who we are.\u00a0<em>That\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>the lifeblood of this art form. Without it, the blockbuster mentality is just a very hungry megaplex snake eating its own tail.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The suits of Hollywood are used to big numbers. That\u2019s how they roll. But the record-setting opening weekend of \u201cSpider-Man: Brand New Day\u201d isn\u2019t something that happens every day, or every year \u2014 more like once a decade. Domestically, the film enjoyed the biggest opening weekend in movie history. And while it had to take&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35411,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/variety.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-e1543416140763.webp?w=891&h=501&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pics-news"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/35411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}