The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies turned out to be an enormous success at the box office, but surprisingly the movie failed to hit the $1 billion mark as expected. The first and second films all made $1 billion, so what caused the third to falter?
Well, it has nothing to do with fans not coming in to enjoy one last ride to Middle Earth. Just like before, moviegoers came out in numbers to support Peter Jackson; however, substantial numbers were not enough to fend off declining global exchange rates.
Yes, the reason why The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies fell $90 million short from the $1 billion mark has everything to do with the global exchange market. The Hollywood Reporter says the movie earned $867 million globally, a high number considering the issues the film faces outside of the United States.
In the past, films have historically earned a lot on the global stage because exchange rates were balanced. However, with the dollar gaining and other currencies faltering, movie studios will now find it difficult to earn big outside of the U.S.
Unless nations around the world rise up to control the free-fall of their currencies, things might turn out to be terrible in the coming years. Movies such as Avengers: Age of Ultron and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice might fail to make it big should things continue down the same path.
At the end of the day though, Warner Bros. and Peter Jackson should be very proud. The Hobbit trilogy cost over $700 million to make, and garnered a profit of $2.916 billion worldwide. That is more than triple the cost, so there is no room for anger here.
The Hobbit films should be viewed as prequels to the Lord of the Rings franchise. Several characters from LOTR showed up in The Hobbit, even a few who were never a part of the book.
Compared to Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit films are of lesser quality and fail to improve throughout the whole trilogy. Clearly, this proves Peter Jackson was only it for the money because it feels that way.
