Brand recognition is as powerful as ever in Hollywood.
Last month, we launched a nationwide poll asking moviegoers which films slated for release this summer they were most looking forward to; we received over 1,850 votes and the results show new ideas may be slow out of the gate.
The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Jurassic World — both part of massively popular movie franchises — were overwhelmingly voted as the most anticipated pictures. The poll allowed voters to choose as many films as they wanted to see. Of the 18 films listed, 10 were sequels or reboots of franchises that were previously made into movies.
Rounding out the top five were Minions, an offshoot of the Despicable Me series, Pitch Perfect 2, and Mad Max: Fury Road.
The highest-voted original movie, meaning one that has never been on the big screen, was Marvel's Ant-Man, starring Paul Rudd. It and the Dwayne Johnson vehicle San Andreas were voted as the ninth and tenth-highest in terms of audience anticipation, according to the poll results on May 1.
Surprisingly, Disney-Pixar's Inside Out didn't garner many votes. The animated film is set for release on June 19 and represents Pixar's first movie since 2013's Monsters University, which made over $743 million at the box office. The teen flick Paper Towns garnered the fewest votes of this summer's slated releases. It's based on a novel by John Green, the author of "The Fault in Our Stars," which was made into one of 2014's biggest box office hits.
So far this year, the two highest-grossing movies among American audiences have been sequels or reboots to popular franchises and characters. Furious 7 has collected over $323 million at the United States box office, while Cinderella made over $191 million.
Clint Davis is a writer for the E.W. Scripps National Desk. Follow him on Twitter @MrClintDavis.
