How’s Hollywood to Plan When It Doesn’t Know Who’s Watching What?

With box office numbers way down in the pandemic and streaming numbers hard to come by, the film industry is often unable to determine whether a movie is a hit or a miss.

LOS ANGELES — Labor Day Weekend is typically a moment for Hollywood to take a breath and assess. After the big-budget escapism of summer and before the Oscar hopefuls of fall, what signals are moviegoers sending? Reading box-office tea leaves is like pontificating about symbolism in works of fiction: Any halfway plausible theory works. But studio bosses need something, anything to guide them as they make billion-dollar judgment calls for the seasons ahead. “Superheroes still seem to sell — keep raiding the comic books.” “Rom-coms were roadkill — no more of those.” Or whatever.