Deadpool & Wolverine's Opening Weekend Gross, and What it Means for Marvel--and Hollywood

As pretty much everyone who follows these things at all expected, not just the entertainment press but the mainstream press is singing the success of Deadpool & Wolverine in the wake of the film's opening weekend.

In fairness, where this one movie is concerned Hollywood's courtiers, do have something to sing about. We first heard of the likelihood of a $200 million+ opening weekend over a month ago--and we have seen those heady expectations validated, the movie taking in $205 million in North America alone. Granted, the number looks a little less sensational when, in spite of the efforts of certain "experts" in economics, we remember that there is such a thing as inflation, and that when we adjust for it the number is not so very much better than the opening grosses of the preceding Deadpool movies (the original Deadpool's $132.4 million opening on Valentine's Day weekend in 2016 the equivalent of $175 million in June 2024 dollars, Deadpool 2's $125.7 million opener in May 2018 the equal of $157 million last month), but post-pandemic it is a considerable achievement for a sequel to match, never mind exceed, its predecessors, in such terms, especially when they were so spectacular.* Moreover, even if the movie does turn out to be fairly front-loaded, this launch is so large as to all but guarantee a really robust final gross. (If the multiplier for the opening ends up being a mere 2.5, as with so many big openers, the movie will still gross a half billion, while even a "super front-loaded" 50 percent would still give the movie a very respectable $400 million stateside.) The international markets, which have already topped the domestic for a worldwide take of $438 million (so that the movie will before Tuesday doubtless breach the mark where in January I still thought it would finish, $450 million), mean that just as with the prior two Deadpool movies the global take should be rather more than twice the North American take, such that I would be very surprised if the movie finished under $900 million, and even its failing to exceed the billion-dollar mark by a healthy margin.

And quite predictably the press is making the most of it, and not at all innocently. I previously remarked how Hollywood was salivating for Inside Out 2's success as a validation of the associated model of filmmaking, and indeed an excuse to greenlight more big splashy sequels to animated hits of the past--and we very quickly heard of Shrek 5 coming our way (with, I am sure, much, much more to come, if it already hasn't). So did it also go with discussion of the prospects of Deadpool & Wolverine. The expected reception of the film (commercially, at least, living up to the very high expectations thus far) has doubtless contributed to the timing of the announcement of a slew of decisions showing us how much more Marvel Cinematic Universe is headed our way--with the Russo Brothers helming more Avengers, including a film to precede the two-part Secret Wars event (really pushing it, aren't they?), Avengers: Doomsday, as Robert Downey Jr. (wait, didn't he play a Marvel character before?) takes up the role of Victor Von Doom, with the character, like the Fantastic Four whose nemesis he is, likewise to appear in the movies (hence, Doomsday).

Altogether, with the summer's two big Disney sequels raking in the cash Hollywood would, I am sure, dearly love to think that 2023 was just a bad dream, and they can go back to business as usual. Alas, the long downward trend that halved per capita ticket sales in North America between the Great Recession's hitting home in the century's first decade and 2022 has not gone into reverse--while for all the talk of the MCU's rescue Deadpool & Wolverine may not be the vote of confidence in that cinematic universe that Hollywood wants to believe it is. After all, like so many of the hits of idiosyncratic 2023, the R-rated, "edgy," "meta" Deadpool strikes me as less a mass audience movie of the kind that Marvel and its Hollywood rivals traffick in (product with an appeal more broad than deep, as with the standard MCU film) than one making its money from a narrower but very devoted following that one could call cult-like, the smaller portion of the audience that cares about really caring about it, and the astute impresario giving those people what they want without minding other opinions so much--as this film promised to do in such details as giving Wolverine his traditional costume. (Indeed, the cult nature of the franchise, and the obvious accent on pleasing them--in contrast with what we so often see with big blockbusters--seems to me one reason why there is such a gap between the audience that rushed to give it its 97 percent score, and the slighter enthusiasm of the critics.) That the cult is relatively large obscures, but does not change, the fact. Also obscuring it is this being a summer and a year of weak competition for action fans generally, and superhero fans particularly (who have not had a really big superhero movie since Aquaman 2, and not had a really promising-looking first-rater since Guardians of the Galaxy 3 way back in May 2023), leaving Deadpool fans that much hungrier; some critical reservations apart, the intensity of the media's cheer-leading, which both likely helped Deadpool achieve its extraordinary gross; and, helping bring in people who might not be all that interested ordinarily in Deadpool the inclusion of Wolverine (who has an overlapping but probably broader fan base, and whose inclusion has been a gimmick not easily repeated). However, if that reading of the film's reception is correct then Deadpool's success would suggest continuity with the trend we saw through 2023 rather than rupture--the success of movies carefully aimed at a part of the audience which really wants to see them, and which give them what they really want, rather than trying to interest "everybody"--all as anyone treating this as grounds for great confidence that there will be a solid turnout for more conventional MCU fare like Captain America 4 or The Thunderbolts next year, especially in the more crowded seasons into which they seem likely to launch, is probably making a big mistake.

The Narrative of Twisters' Success

In hailing Twisters a success the press is telling a story that goes as follows:

Those liberal coastal elitists out in Lalaland usually ignore the heartland, but this time somehow they ended up making a movie that really speaks to them, and lo and behold the movie was a hit and the liberal coastal elitists are just totally flummoxed by how well it did! Finally they are going to learn that they have been ignoring their natural audience all along--and may start treating it right.

We have heard it all before--many, many, many times, with the very regularity with which we hear the narrative debunking the narrative itself, because as with so many such narratives it is actually one of the standard promotional packages for Hollywood's products (which is what a lot of the political nonsense we see about Hollywood is really about). To cite one of the more significant recent occasions on which this was the case, consider the reception enjoyed by Top Gun 2 (Top Gun: Maverick).

The narrative was just as false, simple-minded, and irresponsible then as it is now, even if it was not necessarily false and simple-minded in all the same exact ways. After all, Top Gun 2 was not a mere "heartland" hit but a national and global one for which that "liberal coastal elite" supposedly averse to flag-waving, militaristic display and the rest cheerled with a rarely seen unanimity and breathlessness. (Just check out the Rotten Tomatoes score--and for that matter, how it compared with how critics evaluated the original Top Gun back in 1986, the score almost 40 points higher even when it was basically the same movie.) Thus did the movie break the $700 million barrier domestically, and stop just short of $1.5 billion globally.

By contrast with that spectacular box office performance, Twisters is as yet . . . not a great success. Nor showing any sign of becoming one. I do not see it taking in even a quarter of what Top Gun 2 did globally, or a third of what it made domestically, even before we bring the considerable price inflation of the last two years into the matter. Indeed, the math indicates the possibility of the movie's losing money.

However, there are those unfortunate constancies in the narrative.

That the great, the only, consequential political divide in America is a regional/cultural divide between "Blue" and "Red."

That Hollywood is on the "Blue" and "left" side of the divide.

That Hollywood puts pushing a "left" ideology ahead of making money.

Etcetera, etcetera.

Not only does this narrative have no relation whatsoever to reality (for starters, MEDIA IS A BUSINESS, and the movie studios giant corporations owned by funds like BlackRock, a fact which has made Hollywood the neoliberal economy in miniature, with a politics to match), but the reason why so many are taking, or pretending to take, this cheap promotional maneuver seriously is that it makes for an exceedingly self-serving narrative for those who stoke the fires of culture war, and mean to go on stoking it any which way they can--which includes persons and interests on both sides of the line, who share more in common with each other than they do with the general public whatever their state, Red, Blue, Purple or anything else.

Exemplary of this is how the supposed "liberals" of the New York Times, not passing up this chance to do their bit for climate inactivism, have hailed this weather disaster-themed movie's not mentioning climate change as a great and significant gesture toward Red staters, as they cynically ignore the fact that in real life real climate denialism is a minority even among Republicans--while the hacks at the Times yet again promote the destructive lie that climate change is a matter of "cultural differences" rather than science, technology, economics and the politics of hard interest that has done so much to confuse the issue and obstruct action on the problem.

Twister 2 vs. Independence Day 2

As a decades-later follow-up to a "disaster movie" blockbuster from the summer of 1996, Twisters 2 (Twisters) invites comparison to Independence Day 2 (Independence Day: Resurgence).

Of course, the Independence Day sequel was a big flop back in the summer of 2016. Where the first movie made $300 million domestically and $700 million globally in 1996, the sequel made just $100 million domestically and under $400 million globally two decades later--which worked out to a gross of under a quarter of the original's domestic take, and about a third of its global take, in real terms. Extremely underwhelming in relation to its sensationally received predecessor (a Top Gun 2-Barbie-caliber summer hit within the context of 1996, whether one is thinking in terms of inflation-adjusted numbers or pop cultural impact), it was also underwhelming by run-of-the-mill summer blockbuster standards, given that one generally aims for a lot more than $390 million when they put up a $165 million budget for a movie, which is why the Independence Day 3 for which the movie was a clear set-up has yet to happen.

Right now Twisters seems likely to do a bit better domestically--but a lot worse internationally. The result is that I see the film finishing up with $300 to $350 million globally--just 60 to 70 percent of the half billion the Independence Day sequel grossed in today's terms, on what is probably a similar budget (Twisters' $200 million bill for the production almost as much as the $220 million Independence Day 2 cost in 2024 terms).

No one hesitated to call Independence Day 2 a flop--but the press is treating the much lower-performing Twisters as a hit. There is a real gap in attitude here--partly a matter of the American entertainment press paying inflation little mind as a general rule, and naturally paying more attention to the domestic than the foreign gross, while being eager for any good news about Hollywood's efforts, all while grading on a curve reflecting the tougher post-pandemic cinematic market getting Twisters more favorable treatment. However, there are other factors involved--alas, political factors. While there is no disputing that Independence Day 2 was a massive disappointment commercially (and probably did not generate very much audience affection), the press was eager to beat up on it for the same reason it beat up on the same year's Matt Damon movie The Great Wall--shabby anti-Chinese sentiment. (Thus did Vanity Fair spare a whole article for the ways in which the movie "pandered" to the Chinese audience.)

By contrast, the media is now trying very hard to push the narrative that Twisters is a matter of Hollywood finding success by appealing to the conservative sensibilities they equate with "real" Americans, as in Brooks Barnes' latest at the Times. It isn't a very interesting narrative--quite frankly a repeat of a very tired line, perniciously mixing the stoking of culture war with the promotion of pop cultural crapola. But then Hollywood's courtiers in the press are probably too stupid to realize how little respect they show for the intelligence of their audience.

Variety's "Insiders" on Mad Max: Furiosa's Break-Even Point: Some Notes

In speculating about what it would take for some of this summer's movies to reach the break-even point I was, of course, offering rough estimates based on extrapolation from a formula I developed on the basis of past observation from the limited information about films' commercial performances available to the public.

Plugging the reported production budget for the movie ($168 million) into the formula I estimated $380 million as the break-even point for Mad Max: Fury Road, which looked a long way from anything the movie was likely to make.

Since then the press has more or less been confirmed all this. According to Variety unnamed "insiders" have told them the break-even was $350-$375 million.

The same report has the studio claiming a lower break-even point than that, but, even if we assume that the studio is telling the truth (not a thing one should take for granted these days, any more than they should take it for granted in any other business), the article does not report any numbers.

This matters a lot since the break-even point would have to be much, much lower than $350 million to make much of a difference to the bottom line. After all, the movie's actual global gross to date is a mere $173 million--which is a little less than half the $350 million sum.

The result is that the studio's taking a massive loss on this prequel a near-certainty. Indeed, those who referred to the $350-$375 million range as where the film had to get to in order to cover its cost anticipate a $75-$95 million loss on the movie when all is said and done.

One may wonder what such a loss means in 2024. As it happened even the higher, $95 million, figure would not have sufficed to get the movie onto Deadline's list of the biggest money-losers last year. (The list only went down to #5, which ranking went to Disney's remake of Haunted Mansion, which lost the studio $131 million.) However, 2023 was exceptionally packed with big-budget movies that flopped very hard. This year we have had a very weak and disappointment-filled box office, but because of a confluence of developments including delays in the release dates of a good many major films (two of the three Marvel movies scheduled for this year getting bumped, etc.) also fewer really costly films. The result is that if Fury Road, which likely still holds the dubious honor of being the biggest money-loser of the year so far, seems to me to still have a fair chance of making the list next year--depending on how things go for such upcoming projects as the very costly and very risky Gladiator 2.

As all this implies, the press has been fairly frank about Furiosa being a loser, compared with the way they pretended the preceding Max Max film was a huge hit--without which pretense I suspect Furiosa would have been a lot less likely to have happened. After all, Fury Road probably lost money according to the folks from Entertainment Weekly--but not so much money that the studio's executives did not think that if they did just a little better the next time, and maybe trimmed the budget a bit ($150 million in 2012-2015, when the preceding movie was made and released, equals about $200 million in 2022-2024, versus the $168 million supposed to have been spent on Furiosa, so yeah, officially it cost around 15 percent less), they could at the least hope to eke out a profit this time, and if they got even a little lucky maybe even have the basis for a franchise of the kind that the Marvel envy-afflicted folks at Warner Bros. so desperately want (which would be all the sweeter as those who greenlit the project would find "redemption" for the loss they made with Fury Road).*

Rather a longshot to play, the "Fury Road is a hit" narrative encouraged it--and then, this past decade being what it was, the movie came out in a less hospitable marketplace, in which the North American public's moviegoing had fallen from 3-4 trips a year on average to just over two, with comparatively marginal franchises getting squeezed out in the process (Spider-Man can still draw an audience, but not Barry Allen in a solo outing, no matter how gimmick and cameo-filled). Meanwhile the "taste" for the post-apocalyptic and dystopian is clearly not what it still appeared to be back in 2015 (I suppose the more in as so many of us are aware they are living it, and not loving it). And so in the end these plans were not to be--with the same going for the prospect of yet another Mad Max movie being rushed into production. For a few weeks, anyway.

Twisters' Second Weekend

The press is singing the "success" of Twisters at the box office very loudly.

But how does this compare to the reality?

In its second weekend the movie Twisters raised its total to $155 million with a $35 million Friday-to-Sunday take--a figure that works out to a 57 percent drop from the gross of the prior weekend. That is better than the 68-70 percent drops we saw for Thor 4 and Ant-Man 3, but worse than, for example, the 47 percent drop we saw for Guardians of the Galaxy 3--not disastrous, but far from great, the more in as the opening weekend was not a $100 million+ debut but took in a mere $80 million. At this rate I expect the movie to break the $200 million barrier domestically--but to fall well short of the $242 million the original Twister made in 1996, when the dollar was worth about twice what it is today, all as the movie cost about twice as much as that predecessor to make. (At the current rate of week-to-week decline think $210-$220 million when its run sputters out.)

Moreover, the film is doing a lot less well than that in the international markets. Where the 1996 movie actually made more money internationally than in North America, and that without China being the market that it still is, making for a 49/51 domestic/international split, the same split is 70/30 for the new movie. That is to say, as the movie is on its way to less than half the original's business in real terms in Hollywood's home market, that is still more than twice as much as it doing internationally. Adding it all together I see a finale in the vicinity of $300-$350 million globally as most probable for the movie--versus the $496 million Twister made in current dollars, and the billion dollars to which that is equal today.

The result is that the movie is neither living up to the original's precedent, nor a savior-of-summer caliber hit in the way that Inside Out 2 has been, and that it looks like Deadpool & Wolverine is for the time being. Indeed, given a production budget that has been estimated as being as much as $200 million at this rate the movie could lose money (maybe not Furiosa money, but still, a loss such as no studio needs ever, and especially right now).

So why does the press act as if it is doing well?

Part of the story, I think, is that the folks of the entertainment press are just not very good number-crunchers--by which I mean they never made it up to pre-algebra in the course of their mathematical educations, while they have never heard of this thing called "inflation." Part of it is that, in spite of the crowing about how great the box office is, they are still grading on the post-pandemic curve. And part of it is that they are selling a line, namely that the movie is a success, just as they told everyone Mad Max: Fury Road was a success when it was actually losing money, to some extent because they are courtiers of the industry personnel who make films, to some extent because they are groupthinkers who reflexively tell the same story as "everyone else," to some extent because there may be a little more than that going on in an age in which the entertainment news page is almost as packed with the inanities of what passes for news as the front pages of the mainstream press.

Despicable Me 4: The Box Office Performance the Entertainment Press Doesn't Want to Talk About

These days the entertainment press is absolutely ecstatic about the box office performance of Inside Out 2--a genuine, massive, commercial success of exactly the kind they were desperately looking for, a brand-name exploiting big-budget sequel to a past animated hit that to them seems to prove, yes, Hollywood can go on making money by doing business as usual. (Indeed, to the extent that some reviewers have found the film mediocre this is probably a comfort to those taking this view--because it is a lot easier to make "mediocre" than "brilliant," and it is mediocre that they want and need to be told is still salable.)

That press is rather less ecstatic about the performance of another brand-name big-budget animated sequel, Despicable Me 4. Deadline may sound as if it is bullish on the movie when it advertises Despicable Me as having become the "12th biggest" franchise ever worldwide. Still, the latest film's having (as the same headline reports) as of its fourth weekend taken in $632 million worldwide is not very impressive next to the $1.5 billion Pixar's movie has scored--and for that matter, the grosses of the previous Despicable Me films. The original film took in $252 million domestically and about twice that globally, but this comes to $362 million stateside when we account for inflation--versus the $290 million the latest has made while running out of steam, all as the international earnings prove no more ebullient, such that Gru's latest adventure might not match the nearly $800 million ($782 million) the first grossed in 2010 comes to in June 2024 dollars. And of course, the real benchmark in most minds is not the first film in the series but the sequels that followed--Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3--and the tie-in Minion movies, Minions and the prequel Minions: The Rise of Gru. In today's terms the two Despicable Me movies and Minions blew way past the billion-dollar mark ($1.3 billion in the case of the two Despicable Me movies, the $1.5 billion mark in the case of Minions!), while the second Minions movie just missed it.

The First Five Despicable Me Franchise Films, Worldwide and Domestic Grosses (Current and June 2024 U.S. Dollars, CPI-Adjusted; Adjusted Figures in Parentheses)

Despicable Me (2010)--Worldwide--$543 Million ($782 Million); Domestic--$252 Million ($362 Million)

Despicable Me 2 (2013)--Worldwide--$971 Million ($1.305 Billion); Domestic--$368 Million ($495 Million)

Minions (2015)--Worldwide--$1.159 Billion ($1.525 Billion); Domestic--$336 Million ($442 Million)

Despicable Me 3 (2017)--Worldwide--$1.035 Billion ($1.326 Billion); Domestic--$265 Million ($339 Million)

Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022)--Worldwide--$940 Million ($998 Million); Domestic--$370 Million ($393 Million)

Should Despicable Me 4 manage to struggle up to the $780 million mark the original attained it would still confirm a trend of declining grosses for the franchise when examined alongside these other films--domestically, internationally and globally. In that Hollywood and its courtiers in the entertainment press have a reminder of the reality of the franchise fatigue that conflicts with their narrative of business being on the up and up and not having to change a thing about what they are doing--which is exactly what they are studiously ignoring as they shout louder and louder about the far more comforting performance of Inside Out 2.

The Importance of Opening Weekend

Does Hollywood pay too much attention to opening weekends?

That is the implication of the title of an article that ran in Variety last month--or at least seems to be at a glance. What the author of that article ends up saying is more complicated, and indeed they end up mostly telling the reader just why opening weekend gets so much attention.

I certainly agree about their importance. Granted, opening weekends account for only a part of a film's gross, which in turn accounts for only part of its revenue. Still, it is a large part which tends to be strongly indicative of its larger commercial fortunes. Where those major studio releases which open wide are concerned it is a rare movie that exceeds, matches or even avoids a significant drop in Friday-to-Sunday earnings from its first weekend in theatrical release to its second. It is a rare movie that makes so much as four times its opening during its longer run, with many very successful films making much less (30-40 percent of the final take pretty typical front-loading for highly anticipated blockbusters, so that they often make less than three times that much). It is a rare movie that, after flopping in theaters, goes on to become a hit on video--which is why we hear so much about those movies that do (typically, in the fact giving producers' ideas for sequels they might otherwise not have bothered with).

There are surprises, of course. I did say "rare," after all. And it is possible that surprises are becoming more common amid the post-Great Recession, post-streaming, post-pandemic tumult of the box office. (I have had the impression that moviegoers are a bit less likely than before to rush out on opening weekend.) But even so you really can tell a lot from an opening weekend, especially the big-budgeted, high profile, releases that are the subject of most of the analysis.

And what can be told, as soon as possible, matters more, not less, because the current blockbusters-all-year-round approach to filmmaking gives individual movies so little chance to leave an impression--and are typically part of larger franchise plans, with speedy action to get that sequel/prequel greenlit and underway at a premium.

I do not hesitate to say that there is a lot for anyone who respects film as an art form to dislike about the way the film business is conducted, including this. But so long as it is conducted that way opening weekends are a natural subject of interest for those who do think about that business, and it is simple-minded or disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

Inside Out 2's Box Office Success: A Few More Thoughts

Inside Out 2's performance at the box office continues to be sensational. Just the past week saw the film surpass two more milestones--the movie breaking the $600 million barrier domestically, and the $1.5 billion barrier globally, which, even if we adjust for inflation, makes it the highest-grossing film Hollywood has had since Avatar 2 way back in December 2022 (which was also a far more expensive movie than this animated feature). Meanwhile in getting to its domestic take of $613.4 million the film has already shown itself to not only have opened significantly bigger than the original Inside Out (again, even after inflation), but to have had longer legs (the opening weekend multiplier to the full gross already at 3.98, versus the prior film's 3.94)--this sequel with a bigger opener strictly speaking less front-loaded than its predecessor.

Even fairly late into its run, even as my old expectations about the film (that it would probably just touch the original Inside Out's current-dollar gross, rather than exceed its real-terms gross by perhaps a third) came to seem to belong to another, more pessimistic, age, I did not think the film would approach, let alone surpass, the $1.5 billion mark.

I have also found myself wondering at just why this has been the case--because the more in as the first Inside Out came out almost a decade ago and was not the biggest of Pixar's hits, with what that implies about the eagerness of the audience for a follow-up, and because if the critics are on the whole favorable to the film, they have been less enraptured with the film than one might expect in a way that may count for something. (The view that the movie is a mediocrity testifying to a continued Pixar slump artistically if not commercially not at all hard to find, and this seems to me to matter rather more than the critical slights of the hugely successful Super Mario Bros. film last year.)

I suppose that the paucity of material exciting the family film audience these past few years has helped--Elemental's eventual box office success pretty marginal, Wish one of the biggest flops of the year, while there has not been much else since, with Despicable Me 4 rather less of a success than its predecessors (certainly in real terms, certainly globally). Their weakness has been Inside Out 2's strength--though of course, the "why" does not diminish the very strong possibility that, even if the Deadline review of the movie was not particularly flattering, this movie will win 2024's Deadline's Most Valuable Blockbusters Tournament.

Deadpool & Wolverine Comes Out This Weekend

Back in June we first heard of tracking-based forecasts of a $200 million+ opening weekend for Deadpool & Wolverine. Subsequently Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast was consistent with this--and remained so from week to week, down to their final pre-release forecast Wednesday ($180-$200 million), affirming the expectation that this will be "the biggest R-rated opener of all time."

Will the film's opening live up to these colossal expectations?

This week the moviegoers will decide that--and decide, too, whether the movie, which may have a bit less critical enthusiasm behind it than one might have been expected, will, as the Boxoffice staff put it, prove to be "super front-loaded" so that after the record-breaking opener the movie fizzles out. Still, even as one who had been dubious about this one just six months ago after a year of watching almost every comparable film flop this one looks like just the excuse Hollywood has been waiting for to green-light another slew of superhero sequels--for better or worse.

Some Thoughts on the Prospects of the American Box Office in Late 2024

Earlier this year I speculated here about, among other films, Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine (which I was then calling Deadpool 3) on the basis of the way the box office has run since early 2023--for the most part, disastrously for franchise films--which left me less than bullish about both those movies.

As it happened Inside Out 2 has been by every reasonable measure a hit--not a limited, modest, qualified success like Elemental but a genuine blockbuster that far outdid a highly successful original with a gross that, adjusted for inflation, would have made it a member of the billion-dollar club pre-pandemic. Meanwhile Deadpool & Wolverine is likely to be an equally spectacular success.

Indeed, my thought that Deadpool & Wolverine would still be likely to fall short of the half-billion dollar mark can seem to belong to another world, box office-wise.

But six months on, are we really in a different world from the one I saw in January? It will take more than one or even two hits to prove that, the more in as while Hollywood's courtiers focus attention on the successes, other films have gone on doing less well. Yes, this is the summer of Inside Out, and shortly to become the summer of Deadpool as well, but the summer also saw performances by the latest Planet of the Apes and Mad Max and Bad Boys, among others, that would tend to affirm rather than refute claims of franchise fatigue. Only the most optimistic would imagine that this year will not see any more major films get lukewarm receptions (this may in fact have just happened again with Twisters), or even flop miserably, especially given that the trend had already set in not with the pandemic, but with the Great Recession. After the crash of 2007 we saw the longtime level of moviegoing fall from 4-5 a year per capita in North America to 3-4 over the 2010s, and after the pandemic the figure's fall sharpened, so that these last couple of years it has been to 2-3--with the reality underlined by how in spite of Inside Out 2's success in June 2024 the box office in that month was still down compared with the rather anemic June 2023, never mind June 2019.

Still, I now wonder if maybe the year will not manage a few more hits than I expected. For the moment I do not find myself reconsidering what I said about Gladiator--because even in the best of times historical epics have been so hit-and-miss, and this particular film has so much against it (even before we get to the allegations of review-bombing). But I am giving the chances of the upcoming Joker 2 a rethink.

Second Thoughts About the Second Joker Film?

The original Joker back in 2019 was an exceedingly idiosyncratic film in many ways--an origin story not for a superhero but for a supervillain, which took a low-budgeted, action-sparse, period-set, Scorsese homage approach to telling the story of the "making of" the iconic figure at its center. However, on the basis of the character's intrinsic fascination (how many characters of any type, let alone comic book characters, have brought two different performers an Oscar?), and the controversy which surrounded the film, which substantially had to do with the film's element of social criticism, which had mainstream commentators calling for its censorship.

Of course, many a critic has treated that controversy as having been contrived--but it seems to me that this has tended to be an expression of hostility toward the kind of criticism it had to make, outside the range of subjects they approve (a movie like Jay Roach's Bombshell much more to their liking).

There are thus grounds for considerable skepticism about whether the broader public shares their view. Still, the kind of anticipation the promotion of the first film managed to generate is not easily recreated, all as the sequel arrives in rather a different world, box office-wise and maybe even pop culturally than the original did. If the idea of following up Taxi Driver with New York, New York, so to speak, seems risky, we have seen risk and oddity pay off as seemingly safe blockbusters flopped hard--all as it is easy to picture a year in which Deadpool (who appeared on screen as a villain in someone else's movie first) saved the summer box office seeing the Joker save the box office this fall.

On Twisters' Opening Weekend

When I heard that Twisters was actually happening I was not annoyed with the idea (the way I am, for example, annoyed by the fact that they just keep on making more crappy entries in the Alien franchise), but I was skeptical of its prospects. I was also not surprised when the opening projected for it, in spite of apparent "savior of summer" expectations in some quarters, was not especially high by the standard of $200 million blockbusters--and at Boxoffice Pro fell significantly over the weeks prior to release. (Their initial long-range forecast for the opening weekend was for $65-$95 million; by the week of release it was down to $60-$75 million, the ceiling fallen by a fifth.)

In the event the movie opened to $80 million domestically, and $123 million globally. The numbers are not exactly record-crushing--just decent domestically, and frankly disappointing internationally (The Hollywood Reporter admitting that the $43 million scored in 76 markets was not all that had been hoped for). Especially in the absence of a significant improvement in the international numbers the movie will need very good legs domestically to make back the studio's expenditure on it, never mind match the original (whose $242 million domestic gross in 1996 was the equivalent of a roughly half-billion dollar gross today). Alas, Deadpool & Wolverine comes out next week--and if it is rather a different sort of film, it is still competing with it in the action-spectacle sphere, and expected to be such a major event (a $200 million opening!) that it can be expected to cut into the audience for Twisters, just after it has become clear that Twisters needs every bit of help it can get. The result is that if the media coverage is mostly upbeat (and making full use of their punning skills to give the impression of success--"Twisters takes the market by storm," "Twisters whips up huge storm," etc.), barring very good holds in what will shortly become a much tougher market even Hollywood's courtiers (the ones who made Mad Max: Fury Road sound like it was some massive hit back in 2015) will become less generous in their appraisal.

Inside Out 2 is Quadrupling its Opening Weekend Take

About a week ago I remarked the very good holds that Inside Out 2 had enjoyed from week to week, in spite of the way its big opening would seem to have hinted at a very front-loaded run. This continued this past weekend when, due to a mere 36 percent decline from the prior weekend, the movie added almost $13 million more to its already mighty domestic take, raising it to $596 million.

At this rate the movie is not only bound to break through the $600 million barrier that only one film has breached in the last eighteen months (Barbie, which debuted a year ago), but match the excellent multiplier the first Inside Out enjoyed (3.94), even with a far higher multiplicand--hitting $608 million by next Sunday, or not long after.

One may regard that as yet another "win" for Pixar's first really unqualified hit since 2019's Toy Story 4, and (with $1.4 billion and counting taken in globally) its biggest moneymaker since 2018's The Incredibles 2 way back in the pre-pandemic era.

Given how Disney, and Hollywood, were desperate for a hit of this kind as an excuse to double down on their ruthless milking of past successes, and in Inside Out 2 have finally got it, I would not be surprised at all to hear of an Inside Out 3, an Inside Out TV series, and a live-action remake of Inside Out all headed our way really soon.

Looking Back: Pauline Kael in the Temple of Cinema's Doom (Some Words About Her Old Review of Raiders of the Lost Ark)

Reading Pauline Kael's review of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's cinematic milestone The Raiders of the Lost Ark ("Whipped") some years ago I was surprised less by Kael's appraisal of the film (much of which I disagreed with, not that I expected much else) than the insightfulness of her appraisal of the kind of film it was--a big-budget action movie of the kind that was then still a comparative novelty (especially for American filmmaking) but which we have since come to take for granted as the backbone of Hollywood production and the commercial and even artistic basis of the medium--and, too, what the making of the movie said about Hollywood circa 1981.

As Kael observes, the film, rather than telling a story building to a climax, gives us a long succession of "climaxes" as, with only a fairly perfunctory narrative thread connecting them and little regard for logic (the plot at once ultra-simplistic, overfamiliar, and full of holes, presenting which the film "cuts corners and takes the edge off plot points"), the movie packs visceral thrills together so closely, tightly and efficiently together that, the movie's makers lingering on nothing, savoring nothing, they leave room for nothing else--character, dramatic tension, suspense, while the film even races through the funny moments Kael found its liveliest and cleverest. In the end the result can seem like a commercial for the movie itself ("an encyclopedia of high spots from the old serials, raced through at top speed and edited like a greater trailer--for flash"), which, for all the undeniable technical skill invested in putting it all together (indeed, the editing seemed to Kael so tight it was "as if the sheer technology had taken over"), fell flat for her as entertainment, never mind art. (Raiders, she wrote, is "so thrill-packed you don't have time to breathe . . . or enjoy yourself very much," especially as the movie goes on and the audience gets thoroughly exhausted, even if the performance, which requires the movie to open with a bang and then keep topping itself, had not faltered by that point as it seemed likely to do.)

Kael's being so unimpressed with the movie seems important given that it leads her from appraisal of the film to the state of the film industry that produced such a movie--a "collapsing" movie industry where the marketing came first, with this not because of any "special effectiveness in selling pictures" they had (however much the marketing folks shamelessly claimed undeserved credit wherever they could), but rather their "keep[ing] pictures that don't lend themselves to an eye-popping thirty-second commercial from being made," or if such a film did happen to be made in spite of them, keeping those films from "being heard of" by the moviegoing public. Thus the movies that really needed a big marketing push to help them find an audience (and given their quality, deserved that help) were deprived of such resources as all the backing went to the movies easiest to sell, namely movies made by directors, who, especially given their talent and integrity (Lucas "one of the most honorable persons who have ever headed a production company"), were sadly "hooked on the crap of [their] childhood[s]" like "old Saturday afternoon serials," and equally "hooked on technological playthings and techniques." Indeed, Kael closes the rather lengthy essay with the observation that Lucas, whose then still novel attentiveness to the quality of the Star Wars-brand toys she remarks, is ultimately "in the toy business." Meanwhile, "anything to do with people's lives belongs on TV," such that this is where one goes for intellectually and emotionally more satisfying fare.

Thus Kael, after laying out just how the action movie works (if in rather a sour fashion), very neatly summed up how a financially pressed Hollywood seized on the logic of "high concept" film dominated by simplicity and striking visuals, the way in which it this elevated a certain kind of blockbuster (oriented to action, pace, spectacle, youthful and childhood nostalgia above all else, often as artistically empty as it is technically accomplished), marginalized other kinds of films, and increasingly relegated old-fashioned human drama to the small screen in a way that not only stands up very well four decades later, but feels very contemporary--those critics who actually dare to be critical essentially saying the same things over and over and over again, such that much of what Kael wrote could as easily have been written this week as when she actually wrote it, before most of the filmgoers in this country were even born.* Indeed, for all my disagreements with Kael's broader outlook and her assessment of Raiders (Criticize that magnificent score? How dare you, Madam!), I would strongly recommend Kael's essay to anyone taking an interest in high concept filmmaking, the "poetics" of the action movie, or the history of Hollywood since the "New Hollywood" era--the more in as, as Hollywood flounders amid a crisis far more severe than what it faced in the 1970s, with the strategies it adopted then these days in doubt, it seems an excellent occasion to gain the perspective offered by such a backward glance, and the contemporary commentary dominated by Hollywood's courtiers and claqueurs offers little to compare with it. I also recommend the review as a reminder of just how very, very good this major figure of her era could be when she was at her best, even in this very late and less celebrated phase of her career.

* It seems to me notable that Pauline Kael, in discussing all this, did not once reference the James Bond films that were an important inspiration for both Lucas and Spielberg in the early part of their careers--the regrettable omission pretty standard in discussion of Hollywood's embrace of the action film.

Are Glorified Autocompletes Going to War?

Ever since the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) became "hot" again in late 2022 we have been inundated with coverage of any and every hint of an imminent (or not so imminent) development in the field, as well as speculation about what it all might mean.

Those who are bullish, of course, get more attention--the idea that "Something big is happening" more interesting to most than explanation as to why that supposedly big happening is really "Much ado about nothing." Still, watching this field these past few decades I have consistently seen the hype far, far outrun the reality--certainly to go by what Kurzweil predicted in 1999, the possibility that Frey and Osborne argued in 2013, what Musk promised over and over and over again. Meanwhile Robert Gordon's skeptical views from back in 2000 have never been far from my thinking, and with them the implication I still argued this year--namely that any real artificial intelligence revolution will come when engineers advance AI performance in those key areas of perception of, navigation through and dextrous manipulation of the physical world to the point at which they can reliably perform physical tasks like moving about and handling objects as well as an adult human. And even as AI programs astound observers with their capacity to generate words and images, that prospect still seems remote.

Still, amid a profound remilitarization of international relations the world's armed forces--which necessarily take the view that they cannot afford to dismiss what is only "probably" hype just in case there really is something to it (and frankly, have historically been very susceptible to mere hype themselves)--the longstanding interest of those forces now seems to have a sharper edge as what may have seemed like unrealistic aspirations a few years ago are now being tested out, with this the case with such systems as fighter aircraft. Where a short time ago it seemed as if air forces were drawing back from their earlier, extravagant, expectations for the next, sixth, generation of jet fighters, the U.S. Air Force is now putting the "X-62" through its paces--an F-16D equipped with AI (a fourth-generation fighter with a sixth-generation control system) that has, reportedly, permitted it to take on a human pilot in a mock battle.

Is this the beginning of a process that will go all the way to a new "Revolution in Military Affairs," or is this line of development going to fizzle out the way the promise of so many technologies has in the past?

I suspect that we will get a clue as to the chances of that in what happens with AI in the civilian economy, where the stakes are apt to be less great, the tolerances not so small, as they are in high-technology warfare--and it must be admitted, even mainstream business news coverage is increasingly using the word "bubble" to describe the situation.

If they are right about that it would be far from the first time that defense planners "jumped the gun" in thinking that a still-developing technology was ready for the battlefield.

"Method to His Madness"

I have always disliked the phrase "method to his madness" and the assorted variations on it. This has, I think, nothing whatsoever to do with the remarks of Polonius in Hamlet from which the usage has derived ("though he be mad, there is method in't"), as they never bothered me when I was reading the play or seeing it performed.

Rather they seem to me to have had to do with the particular variant of the phrase that it seems we hear so much "There's a method to my madness" (emphasis added).

This is, I think, because I have a pretty low tolerance for braggarts, and for obnoxiousness, and this is a particularly obnoxious brag.

"What I'm doing looks crazy, but really it's genius! You're just not smart enough to see it because you're not a genius like me!"

"I'm playing 4-D chess and you can't grasp that with your 1-D mind!"

"I'm thinking on a whole other level than you!"

This behavior would be pretty bad even if it were absolutely true--graceless in a way (contrary to our pop culture's stupidities) probably not characteristic of those who might actually be geniuses. However, it is worse than that because the supposed 4-D chess-playing, whole-other-level geniuses just about never prove to be anything but persons of sub-normal intelligence setting themselves up for disaster. So does it also tend to go with cheerleaders for such persons, passing off foolishness as if it were genius. (Admittedly that was not what Polonius was doing, but at this moment I can't help thinking of how things did not go too well for Hamlet . . .)

Hopefully people will start associating this reality with the phrase, and stop using it. But one might as well hope that they would stop tossing around that other famous phrase of Polonius', "To thine own self be true"--and, alas, here we are, enduring the ceaseless warping of the meaning of those words involved in that other cliché.

The American Press' Love Affair with Emmanuel Macron

There seems to me no question that Emmanuel Macron has had an excellent press in the United States since he first appeared on the American news media's radar. Certainly that media is an elite-loving, Establishment-sucking up "respecter of persons" that is deeply deferential and even inclined to flatter heads of state and government, with leaders of the G-7 countries ranking particularly highly with them--so that simply holding the office that he does gets Macron positive treatment. To the extent that such a figure conforms to their expectations of the "international elite" they so exalt (it is a point in Macron's favor with them that he was an investment banker before entering politics), and their stupid fantasies about Euro-aristocrats in particular, they are still more inclined to flatter him--certainly to go by how they praise his looks and alleged "charm" and even his arrogance (all consistent with the image of an aristocrat in those cartoons in which they think, and in their minds especially fitting in a French one). It would seem yet another point in their favor that just as they think anything spoken in English using "Received Pronunciation" must express only the greatest intelligence and refinement (it is Rita Leeds over and over and over and over again with these people), people of their type imagine the same of anything said in French (especially to the extent that they have little or no command of the language, as is generally the case). It may also be that Macron's comparative youth is fascinating to journalists from a country where politics (just like in the old Soviet Union in its later days) has come to be dominated by ungainly gerontocrats who were never much "in their prime" and are now publicly displaying evidences of dementia--while some, even more stupidly, seem to approve of him the more in as they so heartily approve of the, ahem, unconventional, tabloid/Lifetime Channel movie-of-the-week details of his marriage.

However, all that would count for little were it not for the thing about Macron most important to winning their admiration, which is exactly the thing about him that the French public detests him for--not as some fools might have it, his being "too intelligent" or any other such nonsense, but Macron's being a rabid elitist, centrist, neoliberal-neoconservative openly contemptuous of the working people of his country, and of their thinking that they have a right to say in their own government. It is this, after all, that assuaged the hatred many in the American press felt for France and for "Old Europe" twenty years ago, such that they treat them far more favorably today, and which in the wake of his ill-conceived and ill-managed response to an "unexpected" far right victory in the European elections has publications like Politico running articles about Macron as a "tragic" figure of "magnificent mind" rather than discussing his "mind" the way that Emmanuel Todd did last year in his interview with Marianne.

For my part I find Todd's analysis in Marianne far, far more convincing, and suggest that the interested will get far more out of his remarks than any of the piffle that the mainstream of the English-speaking press has to offer.

The Prospects of Deadpool & Wolverine: An Update

A few weeks ago reports of a likely $200 million opening for Deadpool & Wolverine got the entertainment press talking--that kind of thing still very impressive for an R-rated movie even pre-pandemic, and that much more spectacular now. Subsequently Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast confirmed the expectation (more or less), and has since reaffirmed it in the two updates the site has published since (the last one as of the time of this writing still projecting $180 million-$200 million for the debut).

In contrast with the way the estimates crumple in the weeks before opening for so many movies (most spectacularly, in the case of the ballyhooed The Flash back in June 2023, as expectations of a $115-$140 million opening already thought disappointing in light of the hype fell to one of $60-$80 million that itself proved overoptimistic), the expectations for the third Deadpool movie (and kajillionith Wolverine movie) are holding up, with very little way left to go.

The result is that, barring a profound upset at the last minute, the question is not whether the movie will open big (even a significant drop from the $200 million figure would still be reason for those cheerleading for Deadpool's success to feel good), but how the film's legs will hold up. Will this be a case of the interested all coming out at the outset and the movie's revenue falling hard in the coming weeks, or will the movie get a good multiplier for that debut? And, moving beyond the undeniable North American interest in the movie, will this movie do as well internationally, and so give Disney-Marvel something to really celebrate?

One way or the other we will learn the answers to those more difficult questions over the next month.

The Box Office Prospects of It Ends With Us: Some Thoughts

As Ryan Reynolds stars in what may be the biggest movie of the summer, the year and his career, his wife will also have a film hitting theaters--a big-screen adaptation of Colleen Hoover's It Ends With Us.

Why bring it up when I rarely consider the box office chances of movies that are not big splashy sequels to comic book superhero films and the like? From a box office point of view this movie interests me for two reasons:

1. Where adaptations of bestselling books--and not just young adult books or adaptations of children's classics but recent bestsellers for grown-up readers--used to regularly become blockbusters substantially on the basis of readers' interest in them, this has become less common these past many years, with adaptations of publishing sensations in fact tending to be commercial disappointments, as happened with Where the Crawdads Sing and Killers of the Flower Moon. I suspect this is partly because books are mattering less in people's lives (that books become bestsellers after selling fewer copies as the market shrinks, that people less often read the books they buy, that those books they read leave less impression on them, etc.), and partly because what people look for in those movies they go to the theater for increasingly diverge from what they are prepared to enjoy in their books (or on the small screen) when they bother to go to the theater at all. The result is that looking at this movie I wonder whether it will buck the trend, or confirm it.

2. In Deadline's list of the most profitable films of 2023 we saw an unusually high share of smaller and lower grossing films. These movies succeeded not by selling the most tickets through appeal to the widest audience, but the combination of the existence of a limited part of the audience whose interest was high, with low costs. Thus did such movies as Five Nights at Freddy's and Taylor Swift's concert film beat Guardians of the Galaxy 3 in absolute profit, never mind relative return (the net on Taylor Swift's movie twice the total expense, as against a little over a fifth of its expenses with Guardians), all as, with a little help from marketing revenue, the PAW Patrol and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles made the cut as well (the latter movie actually taking the #4 spot!). The result is that if It Ends With Us looks small next to a Deadpool it might find its way to success by that path--with the trajectory of Where the Crawdads Sing suggestive. Where that movie took in a mere $140 million worldwide at the box office (gross, not net), the combination of that figure with the limited outlay for production and promotion made it not just profitable, but translated to a very respectable cash-on-cash return that did not get it on the main list of profit-makers, but did get it on the accompanying list of what one might call "honorable mentions" for lower-budgeted movies. For now Boxoffice Pro forecasts a $20-$30 million opening for It Ends With Us, but for all that it might well end up on Deadline's honorable mention list come next spring--or even better still should the big movies continue to falter as they have done so often this past year and a half. Indeed, it would be all too symbolic of the trend were It Ends With Us to rank higher on Deadline's list than Deadpool come next spring.

Is Bad Boys 4 a Hit or a Flop?

Back in 2020 Bad Boys 3 (Bad Boys for Life) came out in the dump month of January and proved a comparative success, grossing $206 million domestically and $426 million globally. The global figure actually compared favorably with that of the preceding film in the saga, 2003's Bad Boys 2, even after adjustment for inflation (the equivalent of about $520 million versus $470 million in June 2024 dollars), all as the newer film scored its gross on a much lower budget. (Made for $90 million, this may have been just half of the $130 million that went into Bad Boys 2 when we adjust for inflation.)

Such success made Bad Boys 3 the highest-grossing film of 2020 (if only because pretty much every other major movie was deprived of its chance by the pandemic), and probably let it turn a very respectable profit. (There was no Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament in 2020 because of the exceptional circumstances, but I could picture the movie netting $100 million+ very easily on the basis of the numbers, not something that $90 million action movies do much these days.*) This likely made a sequel inevitable, with, just like the gambling on summer by the backers of The Fall Guy, the studio probably hoping to do better still with a June release than one in January, the more in as this summer's competition was not terribly strong in that patch.

How did it go?

Domestically Bad Boys 3 opened to $63 million domestically, or $77 million in June 2024 terms. The "multiplier" for the opening weekend was about 3.3--the movie more than tripling that opening gross over its fuller run.

By contrast Bad Boys 4 (Bad Boys: Ride or Die) had a weaker opening--debuting to $57 million, or about a quarter down in real terms. The movie has also not had better legs, with its take as of five weeks of play about $181 million--or about 73 percent of the former film's gross in June 2024 terms ($250 million or so).

Meanwhile, the international market, once again, did not come to the rescue. Bad Boys 3 made 48 percent of its money domestically, 52 percent internationally, while the fourth film has had a rough 50/50 split so far, leaving it with about $365 million globally--against that aforementioned $520 million or so. The result is that without much further to go the new movie has taken in just 70 percent of what its predecessor did--a significant drop rather than a significant improvement, suggestive of the obsession of Hollywood with running every success straight into the ground and beyond. Still, if the makers of the film really did keep the production budget down to $100 million (in real terms, a smaller budget than the $90 million budget of Bad Boys 3 four and a half inflationary years ago) it is possible, even probable, that this sequel will in the end eke out a profit as well--though especially given the cost of promotion of the film in the summer season, and the claims the stars may have on the film's revenue (plausibly, part of how the budget was held down), likely not one so great that the Suits will rush to green-light a Bad Boys 5 if they have any brains at all. Alas, one is far more likely to lose than win betting on that, the more in as the unhinged sequel-nobody-asked-for-mongers grow only more desperate all the time.

* Taking the $90 million production budget, and estimating from that a final outlay in the $200 million or at most $300 million range when everything is added in; and weighing that against the movie's making $200 million net at the box office and likely matching that in home entertainment, etc. for a total net revenue of $400 million; and we get a $100 million profit (or maybe much more).

In the End, Just How Badly Did Things Go For Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga?

A few weeks go I devoted a couple of blog posts to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga--the disappointing debut of which should have come as no surprise to anyone who remembered how the last Mad Max movie actually did, as against the entertainment press' crowing over it as if it were a gargantuan blockbuster (Max Max: Fury Road making a pretty mediocre gross by big budget summer movie standards, and probably losing money in the process). And even if one was less than clear on all that the memory of how franchise movies about side characters from the franchise's main line generally do would have prepared them for how things actually went. (From the first Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga recalled Disney-Lucasfilm's Solo: A Star Wars Story, which proved a franchise-derailing flop--all as, let us be honest, Furiosa is no Han Solo pop cultural cachet-wise.)

Of course, even allowing for that one may have wondered if a weak opening might not be redeemed by good weekend-to-weekend holds--especially as fairly decent legs helped the Mad Max movie make what money it did (the movie picking up a not bad 3.4 times its domestic opening), and there may be a trend toward movie grosses being less front-loaded. Alas, far from bouncing back from a weak opening with a good run of that kind, the movie did less well than its predecessor that way (its pretty much ended run seeing it take in just 2.6 times what it did in its first three days). Meanwhile the international markets were no source of salvation--the domestic/international split in the global gross for this one pretty much the same as with Fury Road (a 39/61 domestic/international split in the take against 41/59 for the 2015 film). Accordingly the $105 million it has picked up internationally so far compares poorly with the last movie's $226 million back in 2015 (and nearly $300 million in today's terms). The result is a total of $173 million in the till--about a third what the original made in inflation-adjusted terms (its $380 million equal to some $500 million in 2024 dollars).

Am I surprised? Not really. After that opening I thought even $200-$250 million for this one optimistic, a figure I contrasted with the nearly $400 million I thought the movie might need to eventually break even. The result is that what I said in late May still stands:

the movie may have as good a shot at making Deadline's list of biggest box office flops come April 2025 as anything released so far this year--though it is also the case that this year is young, and many bigger movies seem likely to have receptions no better than this before New Year's Day.

Inside Out 2's Staying Power at the Box Office

Speculating about Inside Out 2 as its opening approached I suggested that as a sequel it could not be expected to have the same box office "legs" as its predecessor, especially in the event of a strong opening, with all the front-loading of the gross it tends to portend. As it happened the movie has had a rather stronger opening than the original (even after adjustment for inflation)--but is also at least matching the original with respect to endurance in theaters. The first film roughly quadrupled its opening weekend gross in North America (opening with $90 million and finishing with $356 million). The second film is well on its way to doing the same, with 3.7 times its opening taken in on Friday night ($572 million now in the till), while showing every sign of making up the rest of the distance (another $40 million will do the job), getting so near as to make no difference, or maybe even exceeding it, before it departs theaters altogether--though whatever happens there is no denying that it has already been a major success by this measure, like every other.

All this is, of course, welcome news to Hollywood--clearly hoping that this is a sign of a return to the pre-pandemic norm with regard to the ability of brand name franchise films like this to get people to theaters at the old rates. Yet one can also see the performance of the film as indicative of something else, namely the same thing that helped make Top Gun 2 such a hit back in 2022--the combination of particularly intense media cheerleading by the media with the unusual faintness of the competition. (Family films like IF and The Garfield Movie proved less than colossal hits, and the Despicable Me sequel came along only when Inside Out 2 was in its fourth weekend of play, and even then achieved a respectable gross rather than a sensational one, taking eight days to hit the $150 million mark that Inside Out 2 did in its first three.)

The same combination of cheerleading and weak competition will also work in favor of that other big brand-name Disney production which will be hitting theaters just as Inside Out 2 is fading from them, Deadpool & Wolverine. Along with the undeniably great press for the film, it has had very little to compare with it with regard to big, splashy action this summer thus far (cough, cough, The Fall Guy, cough, cough, Furiosa), and seems unlikely to get any in what remains of the season after its release--the more in as the expectations for Twisters run so far behind those for Deadpool, and by big summer movie standards the prospects for Borderlands look as bleak as the latter movie's space Western landscapes.

On the Word About Shrek 5

Back in May I wrote that Hollywood was desperate to see Inside Out 2 be a hit because it would take the movie's success as a signal that it could go on doing what it wants to do--instead of actually get creative, keep milking brand-name franchises, not least by greenlighting sequels no one ever asked for. Now mere weeks after Inside Out 2 hit theaters, and not much more than a week after its breaking the billion-dollar barrier in that way that no animated film since 2019 managed bar last year's The Super Mario Bros. Movie (even Minions: The Rise of Gru only made it to $940 million back in the summer of 2022), we hear that a Shrek 5 is coming our way. A fifth installment in a franchise that had its last movie way back in 2010, which fourth film was, as is usually the case with these things, regarded as pushing it, and a significantly lower-grosser than its predecessors, it is no accident that the main line of the franchise was moribund for so many years.*

In their seizing on the excuse to try and squeeze more blood from that particular stone Hollywood's decisionmakers prove just as predictable as their movies--all as it seems we have every reason to expect more news of the type in the weeks and months ahead.

* Shrek 4's domestic gross of $238 million in 2010 was, in real terms, about 27 percent down from that of the 2001 original, 53 percent down from that of the 2004 sequel, and 30 percent down from the immediately preceding third film in 2007--though admittedly the international gross compensated somewhat for the domestic shortfall (the movie making twice what it did domestically in the international market). The only other release the franchise has had since 2010 was a sequel to the spin-off Puss in Boots, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, which took in a comparatively modest $186 million back in 2022.

We Are More Than Halfway into 2024. How is the Box Office Holding Up?

As I remarked June 2024 saw the box office (in spite of the success of Inside Out 2) take in less money than it did a year, when June was seeing flop after flop. As one might guess the result was that if the month does not look so bad as those which preceded it, this is only because of how horrible those months were. It is still the case that in 2024 five of the first six months (all but March) have seen the 2024 box office take in less than the same month a year before.

Altogether, where by the end of June the box office had collected $4.4 billion in 2023, as of the same point in the year in 2024 the box office has taken in a mere $3.6 billion. Adjusted for inflation the figure is worse, with the 2023 gross edging toward the equivalent of $4.6 billion in June 2024 dollars, leaving it down about 22 percent. Compared with the 2015-2019 average (calculated in the same terms) it looks worse still. In June 2024 dollars the box office was usually up over $7.3 billion by this point, so that the box office grossed only about half of the pre-pandemic norm.

Of course, one may argue that the second half of the year promises better. Inside Out 2 has already added $100 million more to the month's box office, while Despicable Me 4 has had a respectable opening. Many are also at least somewhat optimistic about Twisters, while of course, Deadpool & Wolverine hits theaters in the month's last weekend. Still, the month will have quite some ways to go simply to match the nearly $1.4 billion take of the month that saw both Barbie and Oppenheimer make their debuts, never mind compare with the still stronger real grosses of 2015-2019--while that will still leave five months to go in 2024. Even a considerably better performance during these next six months than was seen in the first six months of the year could still just get the box office to the $8 billion mark that entertainment industry commentators treated as such a bleak prospect last year, all as the kind of improvement on what we saw in 2023--for a minimum, think a gross closer to $10 billion than $9 billion--seems a very tall order indeed. (We would have to see theater business double from its level in the first half of the year during the second half--or putting it another way, moviegoing bounce back much closer to pre-pandemic levels than anything seen since 2019.) The result is that while Inside Out 2 has been an undeniable success, and I think there is good reason to be bullish on Deadpool & Wolverine's Excellent Adventure and perhaps a few other films, I am more, rather than less, persuaded of my reading of the market as facing a fundamental structural crisis as Americans go to the theaters less, not least because they are becoming harder to draw in with the same old crapola--and, far from the sequel-obsessed business-as-usual remaining viable, Hollywood doing well to look at some new strategies for keeping itself in business.

The June 2024 Box Office

Inside Out 2 is, at this point, a confirmed hit, breaking as it did the billion-dollar barrier as it topped both the domestic and international grosses of the original not only in current dollar but real terms.* Hollywood, which was desperate to see this movie be a hit (as a signal that big franchise movies are still salable and the human refuse in Tinseltown's executive suites have an excuse to go on greenlighting sequels no one asked for), is of course completely ecstatic--so much so that amid the ecstasies one might easily overlook the larger picture. After all, even a hit this big cannot save the industry, its year, or even its month--with the result that, as Furiosa proved a flop, and Bad Boys 4 failed even to match the merely middling gross of Bad Boys 3, even Inside Out 2's mighty performance left June 2024 a lower-grossing month for Hollywood than June 2023, which was itself no prize. With Fast X and The Little Mermaid sputtering out well below expectations, Elemental opening disappointingly, the latest Transformers installment continuing rather than bucking that franchise's downward trajectory, and Indiana Jones and The Flash proving themselves two of the three biggest flops of the year, June 2023 saw the box office collect just 70 percent of the 2015-2019 norm in real terms (calculated in June 2024 dollars). June 2024 saw less revenue than that, failing to break the billion-dollar barrier the way the box office did a year before (with some $966 million collected, as against June 2023's $1.004 billion). Adjusted for inflation this works out to just 93 percent of what June 2023 did in box office revenue, and a mere 65 percent of what would have been expected for the month of June in the years before the pandemic.

The result is that Inside Out 2's success is just part of a more complex picture, however much Hollywood's courtiers in the entertainment press may prefer to think otherwise.

* The original Inside Out made a bit over $850 million, some $1.13 billion in today's currency. The new film has made over $1.25 billion thus far, and counting, with a domestic gross of nearly $550 million in the till (versus the original's $470 million) and an international one of $720 million (versus that one's $660 million).

More Superheroic Nostalgia--and How We Really Remember the '90s (Cory Doctorow Reviews Austin Grossman's Fight Me)

After recently writing about Deadpool as a distinctly '90s creation, and the films as an experience of a bit of the '90s in our day, I happened across Cory Doctorow's review of Austin Grossman's just released novel Fight Me--likewise a superhero tale deeply evocative of the '90s in Doctorow's appraisal.

Doctorow's review, as is usually the case with the novels that he covers at Pluralistic, was strongly positive, but rather than the book's merits (or demerits) what really interested me about the piece was Doctorow suggestion that the book can be read as "The Avengers Meets The Big Chill," and his turn from there to considering Generation X from the standpoint of 2024, with, as the evocation of The Big Chill indicates, the generation's activism foregrounded in that.

This surprised me. If the '90s, and the Generation X that was young during that decade, undeniably had its activism--in which Doctorow was most certainly a participant (and remains one, most obviously on the "tech" front)--it would never have occurred to me to compare Generation X's activism with that of the '60s in the way that he does. Recently writing of the period it seemed to me that, in Robert Merton's terms, rather than "rebels," the archetypal nonconformists of the '90s were "ritualists." These are persons who are not out to change the system the way rebels are, but do what they have to in order to get along in spite of not believing in the system--as with the '90s "slacker" going through the motions with ostentatious unenthusiasm, "ironically," for lack of hope that the world could be anything else in that day in which the conventional wisdom held us to be at the "end of history." Moreover, the slacker was themselves only a counterpoint to the prevailing ultra-conformism. (In what other sort of era, after all, could one sell "market populism?")

Indeed, more than any other part of the '60s in that '60s-nostalgia-saturated period, the activism of the '60s seemed far in the past, with that '90s cinema classic The Big Lebowski, for all its characteristic postmodernist superficiality and incoherence (or perhaps because of it) summing up the situation in its juxtaposition of its two Jeffrey Lebowskis. One was a washed-out old hippie who, in spite of having been one of the Seattle Seven on the eve of the Gulf War, shows no sign of any oppositional stance whatsoever as he quotes without irony George H.W. Bush's rhetoric of a "line in the sand" and hangs around a bowling alley with a caricature of John Milius; while the other Lebowski was a Dickensian businessman who despised everything the first Lebowski had ever stood for as a "revolution" that was happily over with "the bums" having lost.

That still seems to me to represent the essence of the '90s that way--but every era has more than one side to it, and if, by comparison with the movements of the '60s protest in the '90s was a marginal thing, the period did have that other side to it, as Doctorow reminds us in his review.

Is Deadpool Actually Hollywood's Most Successful Piece of '90s Nostalgia to Date?

I remember how when it hit theaters critics received Deadpool as a great novelty because it was a dark, edgy, R-rated film that took an ostentatiously postmodernist, "meta," approach to its material.

Instead of being struck by how novel it supposedly was, I was struck by how familiar it was, and especially by how '90s it all was. After all, dark and edgy R-rated superhero films were fairly common in that decade--when we had The Crow, and Barb Wire, and Spawn, and Blade.

Those films may not have gone as far down the path of "meta" as Deadpool, but they had their share of self-aware silliness nonetheless, quite naturally given how this sensibility absolutely saturated, even defined, the film of the decade. Indeed, watching the first Deadpool, with its combination of edgelordism in the surface details with conventionality and even triteness in the underlying essentials, its ceaseless and often self-deprecatory fourth wall-breaking and rapid-fire pop culture references, its barrage of tasteless humor, I felt myself to be watching a '90s indie movie in the tradition of Smith, Tarantino et. al. about superheroes.

Indeed, it is entirely relevant that Deadpool was himself a creation of the 1990s--a Rob Liefeld co-creation who first appeared in the December 1990 issue of New Mutants who was entirely in tune with the period's notorious penchant for anti-heroes and general edginess and the "extreme"--and snarky irony about the whole thing. And in fact I found it strange that few commented on this--an indication that the increasing overgenerousness of the average film review reflects not only increasing claquing, but plain and simple ignorance of their subject among the current generation of "professional" critics.

Still, if few have remarked it, it strikes me that, between the intense "'90s-ness" of Deadpool and Hollywood's failure to have much success with evocations of the '90s, Deadpool may well be the most successful piece of '90s cinematic nostalgia to date, with Deadpool & Wolverine continuing to walk that path--not least by teaming Deadpool up with Wolverine in the costume a generation remembers from the still well-loved '90s-era X-Men cartoon to do battle with the just-barely-missed-the-'90s-chronologically-and- arguably-actually-really-'90s-in-essence Cassandra Nova.

* Spawn, of course, was trimmed to get a PG-13 in its 1997 theatrical release, but the R-rated Director's Cut later came out on video.