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Scene from “The Lone Ranger.”

By Evangeline Morphos, WSJ

Summer and the blockbuster movie! These big-budget, director-driven, star-helmed films are the “tentpole” events that are supposed to see a studio through it’s budget cycle; they are the revenue spinners that carry the loss leader smaller films that create “Oscar buzz.” Summer family fun is going to the beach and going to the movies.

So what happened this year? Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and every other publication that reports on the entertainment industry is trying to figure out why some of the most-hyped films of the summer are– let’s face it–the f-word: “flops.” The suggested reasons for the poor box office showings range from poor marketing to the 17-year cycle of the cicadas.

I’ve been on vacation for one week and have seen 16 films. (OK—most were part of the Nantucket Film Festival)—but the others have been doozies: “World War Z,” “White House Down,” and “The Lone Ranger.”

Hollywood analysts are all stumped: How could the dynamic directors Marc Forster, Roland Emmerich, and Gore Verbinski have been so wrong? Why aren’t audiences flocking to see Brad Pitt, Jamie Foxx, Channing Tatum, and Johnny Depp? Some of these budgets clocked in at around a quarter of a billion dollars. What went wrong?

(More here.)