There’s something wrong with the movie industry.

It might be the box office numbers. 2017 has been a year of exceptional weekends: the lowest grossing weekend since 2001, the lowest grossing Memorial Day weekend since 1999, or the lowest grossing Labor Day weekend in over a decade. Combined, 2017 had the first sub-four billion dollar summer box office since 2006.

But why now?

Hollywood’s strategy of relying on remakes and sequels as blockbusters has proved to be far from sure-fire, but the top three grossing movies of 2016 were all sequels part of franchises all distributed by Disney. In an audience supposedly suffering from franchise fatigue, hit original movies still seem like the exception rather than the rule in a sea of bombs.

Average ticket prices have steadily risen, hitting a record high of $8.95 in July, but when accounting for inflation and the increasing popularity of the more expensive IMAX, ticket prices have actually become cheaper.

Minority representation remains unresolved in Hollywood as whitewashing and gender disparity have entered the public consciousness, but tepid progress has been made. Most recently, Daniel Dae Kim replaced Ed Skrein in the role of Major Ben Daimio, an Asian character, in 2018’s Hellboy reboot, but minority roles are still underrepresented in media. At the same time, Bollywood, Chinese, or Korean movies have been consistently played in many American theaters, and international audiences, especially the Chinese market, become increasingly important for box office performances.

Many take issue with entertainment journalism’s sensationalization of inevitable conflict and disagreement in a movie’s production cycle. Movie critics often fail to predict the sentiments of a general audience while movie review aggregate sites can cripple movies before their opening night. But the negative audience response of recent movies such as “It Comes at Night” and “Mother!” could both be attributed to their misleading marketing despite positive reviews; while for many movies, being universally panned seems to have no effect on its box office numbers.

The mounting external pressure from streaming services such as Netflix has pushed the silver screen into the spotlight, but the movie industry has endured technological progress by taking advantage of innovation. With multiple streaming services pouring funds into original movies and the rise of MoviePass, a subscription service integrated with traditional movie theaters,  they may be the energy that revitalizes the movie industry or the nail in its coffin.

The industry obviously has room for growth and revitalization; the question is how. Welcome to the strange world of the film industry. In this column, I hope to breakdown the black box that Hollywood can be and answer that question.