Funny you say that because critics think Ghostbusters is a good movie.

Hard to say if it's actual number of people, since all we have are grosses and estimated tickets sold based on average prices. We don't know how many individuals made at least one trip to the theater in a given year, or how many of them were repeat visits. But in any case per capita ticket sales have indeed declined since 2002 (see chart from other post), as have total ticket sales:

That's a 16.6% decline. So, even in absolute terms we're seeing fewer tickets despite a growing population.

However, I decided to take a look at some different metrics to see if I could discern any detail about what changes in habits moviegoers might be exhibiting. While I did some rounding, I was able to determine that the top 20 movies of 2002 grossed just slightly over $6B adjusted domestically, while in 2016 the top 20 movies combined to around $5.7B, a decline of only about 5%. The top 10 movies of each year showed 2016 down only 1.5% vs. 2002, nearly flat. It's possible that moviegoers are simply reducing their trips and focusing on fewer titles that provide quality entertainment (for a given definition of "quality").

Whenever I have time, I'm going to piece together more detailed charts to see what I come up with.

Its critic metascore is 60 which is slightly below average not good which is 70 or higher.  I'm pretty sure there are plenty proffesional reviewers that hated it as much as most of the general public.

I'm guessing in over 30 years and this weekend is going to be even worse.  The end of the year North American box office is going to be down compared to last year unless we get a bunch of movies that over perform in the final three month but I can't see that happen.  2017 really hasn't been a very good year when it comes to quality movies especially live action comedies.  Baywatch was terrible and everything else wasn't much better either and the rest of the year there is really nothing else except for sequels that don't look better then the original movies either. 

I'm not the biggest movie fan but lately, I've found TV / streaming shows to be a lot more interesting than movies. I think the competition is really strong here, at least for me personally. Also agree that political statements are a turn-off. The guy who made the emoji movie (!) said it would "fight Trump" and show a female character "break through a glass ceiling". And the Oscars were just cringe-worthy. 

?????? You right wingers crack me up.  Take off your tin foil hat please and take your meds.  There haven't been making any political statements in any major movies lately.  The box office is down because we had a bunch of crap movies and uninspired sequels so far this year.

Ticket sales are decent still though.

Seems to me really that 1996-2004 experienced a boom and movie ticket sales are still at a healthy-ish clip considering movie ticket prices have outpaced inflation (not to mention pop corn and drinks probably cost a ton more these days too). So maybe '96-'04 should be looked at as an outlier rather than the normal.

Yes the population is higher, but so are the competitive choices. In 1998 you didn't have Netflix, Youtube, DVRs to record TV, you didn't have TV on the scale of Game Of Thrones (let alone 200 different TV shows in your back catalog to get to), you couldn't pirate movies so easily. In '98 your options generally were to go to Blockbuster Video and rent 1 movie for the weekend, and if the 10 copies of the New Release you wanted to watch were gone, well tough shit, you were watching something else, lol. None of that "instant streaming" of new releases that every cable service has today.