Here's the thing about having an exceptional year: the one that follows is bound to be a disappointment.
So it is with the Australian film industry, at least as far as box office is concerned. Last year set a new record in dollar terms, with Australian films racking up more than $88 million in ticket sales locally for a 7.2 per cent share of the total – the best result in 15 years.
This year, though, it's a different story. As of Thursday, the top 20 Australian releases had taken just $18.5 million. Their share of the box office total currently sits at 1.7 per cent, lower than any year since 1977 (as far back as Screen Australia's records go) apart from 2004. It will lift by year's end – but not by enough to make this anything other than a so-so year at best, a bad one at worst. Assuming it hits the $25 million mark, that will still amount to a drop, year-on-year, of a massive 72 per cent.
But the problem, says Screen Australia boss Graeme Mason, isn't structural – it's just in the timing.
"If a couple of films this year had come out when originally intended, we wouldn't be having this conversation," he says. "If everyone would allow me to have this conversation at the end of January, we'd be saying this was a good year."
Mason is referring to two titles in particular, both of which were originally slated for earlier release.
"The Red Dog sequel is going out on Boxing Day on something like 380 screens," he says. "It's massive. Roadshow have chosen the biggest box office release date of the year, the day they've traditionally released Lord of the Rings-type films.
"The other is Lion, which the distributor decided to move back to January. Between them, people are talking about those films doing $40 million or so."
If it clicks with audiences, Red Dog: True Blue could take $5 million or more in the final week of 2016. The only other Australian title likely to kick in significantly is Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge, which has taken more than $6 million so far in Australia (globally, it is hovering around the $100 million mark, a solid return on its estimated $45 million budget).
Hacksaw Ridge is widely expected to sweep the field in the AACTA awards on Wednesday December 7. It is far and away the most high-profile and commercially successful contender. In the best film, category, for instance, it is up against The Daughter (theatre director Simon Stone's adaptation of Ibsen's The Wild Duck), Ivan Sen's Goldstone (a sequel of sorts to Mystery Road), the Vanuatu-set islander romance Tanna and Girl Asleep, an experimental theatre-to-film adaptation from South Australia's Windmill Theatre.
These films all have plenty to offer, but only The Daughter fared even passably at the box office ($1.75 million). Combined, the other three only just topped $1 million.
In truth, very few local movies fired at the box office this year. Only five took more than $1 million, and one of those – The Dressmaker ($1.75 million) – was a holdover from last year. With $1.27 million, the documentary Sherpa counts as a genuine success; with $2.53 million, the big-budget Gods of Egypt rates as a disappointment.
Last year's run of six films taking more than $7 million (including 2014 holdover The Water Diviner) was always likely to be a bit of a freak, but Mason has ambitions to make it less so.
The critics loved Girl Asleep, but audiences barely noticed it.
"If I can get a whole lot of films in the $3-10 million range, that would be terrific," he says. Ideally, he thinks our industry could be turning out about five of them a year. The agency he heads can play its part by focusing its resources on projects that "know their audience and how to reach it".
That said, Screen Australia doesn't only support films that have a shot at making money; its cultural brief means it will necessarily support riskier projects that might never score big with audiences but are important as "incubators" of talent. On that measure, Mason insists many of the modestly performing films this year "were almost exclusively aimed to be that. It's not like we had train wrecks".
Mason wants us to start thinking of Australian film performance on a three-year cycle, because that's about the length of time it takes a project to get up, and it helps to iron out the freak peaks and the low lows. Overall, he wants to see the Australian share of box office averaging about 4.5 per cent.
The documentary Sherpa was a sleeper hit.
Given this year's effort, that sounds ambitious. But, he says, he's confident about what lies ahead.
"We've got some great films coming through – Dance Academy, Ali's Wedding, Flammable Children, Breath, Jasper Jones, Berlin Syndrome, Winchester, Storm Boy, Fred Schepisi's Andorra. It could be a really healthy year."
Then again,he might want to hope it's not too healthy. That would only be asking for trouble in 2018.
Karl Quinn is on facebook at karlquinnjournalist and on twitter @karlkwin
