Last summer, only 22 films released on over 2,000 screens. Last year hit $3.4 billion.īut the industry is feeling optimistic. Pre-pandemic, that usually meant more than $4 billion in ticket sales. Since “Jaws,” the summer season has been the most important for the moviemaking industry and typically accounts for around 40% of a year’s domestic box office, according to data from Comscore. This year it kicks off on May 5 with the release of Disney and Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.

The summer movie season always begins before actual summer. And before you go googling, the Highlander jokes are not about that film’s disastrous 1986 box office run, but instead the enduring “there can only be one” line. There were even a few hours in April when the internet panicked that the beach-off was canceled (it wasn’t). In 2008, “The Dark Knight” debuted on the same weekend as “Mamma Mia!” and both went on to be major successes.īut it has inspired the kind of feverish, half-serious, half-joking discourse online that no marketing can buy, with memes, jokes, bets and Highlander references galore every time either film drops a new advertisement. Second, while opening weekends are important, they’re also not everything. First, it’s entirely possible to see two new movies in one weekend. The “Barbieheimer” showdown is, naturally, a bit silly. On that fateful Friday, cinephiles will be faced with a difficult choice: Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” or Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie”? Dead Reckoning is available at Smashwords and in print and for Kindle at Amazon.The stakes are always high in the summer movie season.īut even in a schedule that has heavyweights like Indiana Jones, Ariel, Ethan Hunt and Dominic Toretto vying for box office supremacy, the biggest, funniest showdown is happening on July 21. I draw on my knowledge of the islands, its people, and my sailing experiences around the Caribbean to create intimate and lively portraits of the islands and the people surrounding these compelling mysteries. Vincent and the Grenadines, a tropical archipelago in the Eastern Caribbean where I lived and sailed for many years. My debut novel Dead Reckoning, is the first in the Bequia Mystery Series, set in St. How these authors used words and language, and the type of characters they created, all influenced me and my writing.

And among my science fiction influences, Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, Wells, Verne. Parker, Le Carre, Forsyth, Deighton, Dick Francis. I spent many years sailing, and long stretches at sea allowed countless hours absorbed in the pages of these authors and other inspirational favorites like Robert B. My all time favorite character is Travis McGee by John D. And authors who continued the tradition, like Spillane and John D. The guys who invented the genre and created fantastic characters like Sam Spade and Lew Archer. My major influences are the old school 'hard-boiled' founders like Hammett, Chandler and Ross Macdonald.

Dead Reckoning by Michael W. Smart