Barbie and Oppenheimer Saved the Summer 2023 Box Office

In the 11-week period beginning in the first weekend in May and ending with the third Thursday of July the summer movie season of 2023 was actually running 7 percent behind that of 2022 in current dollars, with $2.373 billion taken in versus the prior year's $2.557 billion. (Adjusting the numbers for inflation, of course, makes the picture still worse. Going by the 3 percent rise of prices between July 2022 and July 2023 reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index the summer of 2023 was more like 10 percent behind in real terms.) That is to say the first weeks of July not only continued but worsened the pattern seen in the first two months of the summer as Indiana Jones 5 flopped, and Mission: Impossible 7, far from getting a bump from the good will toward the prior year's Top Gun 2 as many suggested, proved the series' weakest earner to date (all as the slew of disappointing earlier releases still played, like The Flash, continued to make very little money).*

However, things went very differently after that third week in July--when Barbie and Oppenheimer hit theaters in the same weekend. In the 46-day period between that fourth weekend in July and Memorial Day the box office took in almost twice what it had the year before--$1.665 billion, versus the prior year's $834 million. The extra $800 million+ more than made up for the circa $200 million shortfall of the prior two-thirds of the season, and resulted in the summer of 2023 managing to exceed the gross of the prior summer overall ($4.038 billion to $3.391 billion overall, a gain of a fifth in current dollars and a rough sixth in real terms).

As one might guess, that stellar late season box office compares favorably with robust late summer periods of the pre-pandemic years. (Even adjusting for inflation this was about 83 percent of what the box office took in in the same period in the year of Suicide Squad, 2016, and 91 percent of the gross for the matching period in 2019.) And it was overwhelmingly due to just two movies--namely Barbie and Oppenheimer. With $923 million taken in between them by themselves they outgrossed every movie in theaters in the same stretch in 2022, including even Top Gun 2 in these later phases of its impressively leggy run, and accounted for 55 percent of the take of the whole box office during those 46 days (as well as 23 percent of what the movies made during the whole season).

Even though many were bullish about both those movies few expected them to do quite so well. (Just a month before release Boxoffice Pro's projection's high end in the range of $200 million for both, and even if its estimates went up over the following weeks the movies have outpaced the publication's highest expectations.**) It is a reminder that in this case Hollywood's salvation was a surprise--just as was the case with the Super Mario Bros. Movie that delivered a Barbie-like gross back in the spring (in its way more impressive, as the critics were bashing it rather than cheerleading for it as they have been Barbie)--while all three of these movies have confirmed a pattern since the pandemic in which a mere handful of big movies account for an ever-higher share of movie ticket sales.

That, in turn, confirms something else--the way Hollywood's once reliably blockbuster-generating machinery is sputtering, such that when it does succeed it underlines its own haplessness.

Will Hollywood luck out this way again in 2023? None of the upcoming releases with which I am familiar look very promising that way (even before we get to the way in which the strike and all connected with it are getting so many of this year's movies bumped to next year). But anyone with a different opinion is, as always, welcome to offer their thoughts in the comment thread below.

* After its first fifteen days in release The Flash added a mere $12.5 million to its domestic gross (at least, as of August 17, on which its total was $189).
** Notably Boxoffice Pro was at that point still expecting both Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible to make well over $200 million and very possibly break the $300 million barrier even as they put out their estimates for the two late July releases discussed here. Their July 13 forecast, one week before release, they still pictured Barbie topping out not much above $400 million at best ($426 million), and Oppenheimer falling short of the $200 million mark ($194 million)--significant underestimates on both counts (working out to a combined maximum in the $600 million range, whereas their actual grosses are now $900 million+).