How many people went to the movie theaters in the past 12 months to watch such films as Blade Runner 2049, Geostorm, Downsizing or An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power?
If you’re not one of them, you’re not alone. Each of those movies featured the catastrophic results of climate change and global warming as one of its major plot points, which failed to draw audiences in 2017.
According to a Friday front-page article in the Washington Times by Christian Toto, “climate change got its close-up” during this calendar year, but while Hollywood is still trying to save the planet, “moviegoers aren’t buying eco-messages anymore.”
“The timing, in theory,” Toto stated, “couldn’t be better for Hollywood bean counters” since the nation faced such weather-related catastrophes during the 52 past weeks as:
Three major hurricanes. Massive fires in the West. Record-setting chills.
Media reports routinely connected the disasters with a warming planet.
Nevertheless, he noted, “audiences stayed away from films influenced by eco-concerns. Far, far away,” in fact.
Of course, the most popular film of 2017 was Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which took again took us to George Lucas’ adventures that happened “a long, long time ago” while raking in more than $450 million since it debuted in early December.
The sixth best-attended movie featured the characters from DC Comics’ Justice League, while the popular Marvel Comics film Thor: Ragnarok came in as Number 8 for the year.
The closest any film dealing with climate change got to the top of the list was Number 28, the long-awaited sequel to the original Blade Runner movie.
Toto also noted that Former Vice President Al Gore’s “sequel to the documentary An Inconvenient Truth paid the most attention to climate change, of course.”
However, “the 2006 original scored with audiences and Oscar voters, earning best documentary honors,” the Times reporter stated. “The sequel snared a fraction of the first film’s tally: $3 million versus $24 million."
“That’s despite massive media attention, mostly fawning reviews and promotion from eco-conscious stars such as Paul McCartney, Bono and Pharrell William,” Toto noted.
“Documentaries rarely make serious coin at the box office, but the drop” for this film “was massive.”
In an article written the following week by Valeria Richardson, one of Toto’s colleagues at the Times, “Al Gore’s sequel to An Inconvenient Truth has ended up on the short list for Oscar consideration despite questions about its credibility raised by challenges to some of its climate-change claims.”
Richardson added that the sequel was among the 15 films included by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on its list of those still in the hunt for 2017 Best Documentary, which will be pared down to five finalists when the nominees are announced January 23.
“We are humbled to be on the Oscars shortlist for Best Documentary Feature,” a message at the documentary’s Twitter site stated. “Our message is more important than ever.”
The Times reporter also noted:
The Oscar buzz comes despite pushback from skeptics, led by University of Alabama in Huntsville climatologist Roy Spencer, a former NASA scientist who accused Gore of attributing natural phenomena to human-caused climate change.
In September, Spencer published an 84-page e-book, An Inconvenient Deception, which blasted the film as “bursting with bad science, bad policy and some outright falsehoods.”
In another article written by Richardson, the self-published e-book began by outselling Gore’s companion volume to his film on Amazon.
Gore’s book was ranked 16,459th among paid Amazon e-books at the time, while the e-book An Inconvenient Deception: How Al Gore Distorts Climate Science and Energy Policy, came in as 328th.
“In a head-to-head matchup in the Amazon category of climatology, the Spencer book was ranked first ... while Mr. Gore’s handbook came in 11th,” Richardson stated.
As NewsBusters previously reported, Gore’s second film “failed to heat up the box office, falling from 16th to 18th over the August 11-13 weekend."
It was a dramatic fall from glory for the climate alarmist, whose first film won several awards, including an Oscar.
