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.