Summer Movie Season Is Turned Upside Down

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(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- While most Americans are slowly being allowed out of their homebound cocoons as summer unofficially begins, they won’t be able to see any movies at the theater any time soon. 

The modern summertime blockbuster tradition began in 1975 with Jaws. Forty-five years later, there’s a different look about summertime moviegoing.

"We’re not going to be starving for entertainment on the television set in our home at all,” film critic Dann Gire says.

But if you're looking for real summertime blockbusters, Gire says the new James Bond flick and the Top Gun and Wonder Woman sequels have been moved to the fall. 
Old summertime blockbusters, however, will be shown for the next few days at the McHenry Outdoor Theater. E.T. and Jaws are on the bill.

Meantime, high quality movies will be coming out on Netflix, Hulu and similar services, Gire notes. 

”You’ve got a lot of the lesser blockbuster movies that have simply gone to video-on-demand,” he says. 

Among those, he says, is The Vast of Night, which Gire calls a Twilight-esque movie that, "by the way, is pretty good."

One thing is for certain, Gire says, is the coronavirus quarantine has changed movie-watching for a long time to come.  According to Box Office Mojo, which tracks box office revenue, summer movies the past couple of years generated about $4 billion each year. Box Office Mojo says that accounts for nearly 40% of the box office a year in North America.