At the outset of 2023 I predicted the normalization of the box office on the basis of the combination of the prior year's evidences of the revival of North American moviegoers' readiness to go to the theater (seen in how the Spider-Man, Top Gun and Avatar sequels took in over $2 billion between them) with the first pre-pandemic style slate of would-be blockbusters since 2019.
Things did not go that way. Rather than the box office recovering from the 54 percent of the (real, inflation-adjusted) pre-pandemic 2015-2019 norm that it was in 2022 to 100 percent of that norm, or 90 percent of that norm, or 80 percent, or even 70 percent, 2023 saw the box office take a mere 64 percent of the 2015-2019 average in ticket sales. Yes, the year was packed with "big movies" in a way not seen in years, but moviegoers shunned most of them, resulting in a year crowded with costly flops, and the year's combined take only marginally higher than before--even with the help of that handful of less conventional successes that beat the expectations for them (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the animated Spider-Man, Barbie, Oppenheimer, and to a lesser degree a few others like the Taylor Swift concert movie), without which the 2023 box office would have probably seen a decline from 2022.
One can argue for various factors at work here. Perhaps the pandemic has permanently reduced North Americans' relatively high propensity for moviegoing (reducing their 4 trips to the theater per year, if not quite to the 1-2 seen in Germany and Japan, perhaps to 2-3 a year). Perhaps the public has, in the way long expected by some, lost its tolerance for endless sequels and prequels and reboots of the same handful of increasingly long-ago hits from a very few different genres--or at least one of those genres ("superhero fatigue" kicking in). However, there is nothing to make anyone think those factors will not matter to 2024, which has the further disadvantage of many of its potentially biggest movies having been bumped to 2025 by the strikes of last year.
This especially seems something to think about as summer approacheth. Back at this time last year people were speculating about the possibility of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and The Flash being billion dollar hits, about how well Indiana Jones 5 would do, how Disney's live-action remake of The Little Mermaid might restore some of the studio's lost luster, how good will toward Tom Cruise for Top Gun 2 might bolster the fortunes of the latest Mission: Impossible film, etc., etc..
Alas, it did not go the way they thought it would, while even by pre-pandemic standards this summer would not have looked very strong. Yes, there are lots of big sequels--but not a lot of likely record-breaking, billion dollar barrier-blasting first-stringers. The season opens not with Marvel's superheroes--but with an adaptation of The Fall Guy promising the weakest opening for a summer kick-off movie since 2005. After that we have a continuation of the Planet of the Apes reboot that seems an unnecessary addition to a series past its commercial peak, and Mad Max (sequel to a movie more critical darling than box office record-breaker), Twister 2 (following up a movie from 1996!), an adaptation of the Borderlands video game by Eli Roth, yet another Alien prequel (groan), more Bad Boys and more Deadpool, and at the very end of the season, two more superhero films, namely a Crow remake (a relatively low-budgeted remake of a mere cult hit from three decades ago), and another installment in the Sony Spider-Man Universe (you know, the one that brought you Morbius and Madame Web) in Kraven the Hunter. The animated offerings may be a little stronger, with Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 on the way, but I think in each case the studio is pushing its luck, all as, if a Barbie-style hit is necessarily a surprise, I see not the least little hint of any of the other movies on the schedule becoming such a success. The result is that I would not be shocked if the summer of 2024 saw its grosses consistently run below those of 2023 all the way through the season, from a May that seems bound to compare poorly with the preceding one that delivered Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Fast and Furious 10 and The Little Mermaid (for all their individual and collective underperformance), to August (when the movies by Nolan and Gerwig were raking in the cash and saving the studios).
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