The July 2024 Box Office--and What it Means for the Year So Far

The summer saw its share of tepid, or worse, franchise performers back in May and June--Planet of the Apes, Mad Max, Bad Boys. July added to the list with Despicable Me, A Quiet Place and Twisters (not Mad Max-caliber disasters, the numbers for the first two strictly speaking respectable, but still, disappointments compared to the business their predecessors did that make the trend of diminishing returns on investment in these franchises all too clear).

However, the press, true to its function as courtiers to the rich and powerful, have opted to instead emphasize the successes of Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.

Of course, there is no denying the fact that Inside Out 2 went above and beyond at the box office, outgrossing the hugely successful first film by a rough third after inflation, domestically as well as globally, in the process of amassing its $1.5 billion in ticket sales. And Deadpool & Wolverine, if just opened, has taken in over $800 million in its first ten days in release. In the process the two movies added over $430 million to the North American box office for the month. Still, that total has not been spectacular. As of July 28 the North American box office July has seen $1.178 billion in ticket sales--which sounds like a lot until one remembers that in July 2023, even with all its underperformers and outright flops (Elemental and The Flash and Indiana Jones from the prior month, Mission: Impossible and Haunted Mansion that month), the box office did about $1.36 billion in business (and more like $1.4 billion in the June 2024 dollars that give us a much more useful picture), while the 2015-2019 norm was more like $1.6 billion when adjusted for inflation. The result is that in real terms the July 2024 box office probably did just 84 percent of the business it managed in the previous July--and 74 percent of the 2015-2019 norm.

The weak total is testimony to the fact that if Hollywood--indeed, Disney--managed to score two real mega-hits in the June-July patch, they are exceptions to a generally grim situation that has only gone so far in brightening the outlook for the season and the year. The above figures, after all, translate to the three summer months of May-June-July 2024 taking in just 83 percent of what the box office did in the same period a year earlier, and a mere 62 percent of the 2015-2019 norm. The result is that where in January-April the 2024 box office took in just 75 percent of the total for 2023, and 45 percent of the 2015-2019 norm, this improvement still leaves the take for the year at 84 percent of what the box office managed in 2023 by the same point, and 53 percent the 2015-2019 norm--which is to say, just over half.

In short, for all the exultation over a couple of successes these past months, Hollywood's longtime crisis goes on--and seems all too likely to go on doing so. Indeed, we may see some backsliding in the weak month of August given that, Deadpool likely having made almost half its money in those last six days of July, while the traditional "dump" month's releases do not look very promising (no one expecting Borderlands, or new installments of Alien or the Crow to sell out theaters, and indeed the three unlikely to make in their whole North American run what Deadpool did in its opening weekend, or even what it made just by Saturday night). Meanwhile the hoped-for hitmakers of the fall months--retreads of Joker, Gladiator, etc.--all look to me very risky indeed, and likely to test what Hollywood is so clearly hoping for, namely that the trend of franchise films of the kind they so love to sell the public losing rather than making money has run its course and they can press on with their familiar (lazy, crass, creatively bankrupt, intellectually stultifying, widely despised) business model rather than face up to the necessity of change at which last year hinted if they are to stay in business, the more in as the courtiers, like all examples of their kind, encourage the Caesars of the studios in the absolute worst of their behaviors.