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.