Why Are So Many Domestic Box Office Hits Doing So "Poorly" Overseas?

Variety recently published an article noting that a good many recent cinematic hits in North America have underperformed in the international market. It seems to me that the observation is valid (especially when we remember that in cases the underperformance is only relative, the international earnings of the Beetlejuice sequel or Wicked only appearing low relative to their North American success) the analysis, if quite rightly acknowledging the declining access Hollywood enjoys to the hugely important Chinese market (and the Russian market too), and in a cursory way too the reality that there are other film industries out there competing with them for the international audience in a way that they aren't for the North American filmgoer, suffers from the deficiencies one would expect of what is so much an "Establishment" publication in movieland, having about it a great whiff of entitlement that reminds one of just how much Hollywood takes the international audience for granted. For that reason I think it worth raising the following three factors plausibly at work in this situation, the first at best partially acknowledged in the article, the latter two not acknowledged at all.

1. Some genres "travel better" than others. The most obvious case is the big sci-fi action films and animated family spectacles. Entirely consistent with the pattern the examples of the type that did well in North America did well overseas. The year's biggest live-action hit, Deadpool & Wolverine, picked up $700 million internationally atop its $600 million domestic gross--while Dune Part 2, Godzilla, Gladiator 2, Venom 3 and Alien: Romulus considerably bettered their domestic performance in the international market. So did it go with films like Inside Out 2, which broke the billion-dollar barrier internationally (on top of making over $600 million in North America), all as Despicable Me 4 and Moana 2 (and on a lesser scale, Kung Fu Panda 4) have similarly done well by this measure. However, the absolute top ranks of the North American charts this year have been a little thinner on really big action movies this year than usual. The result has been that the kinds of movies that don't travel as well have been more than usually well-represented here--as with those top ten hits Wicked, which in contrast with some musicals that do well globally didn't have a built-in global audience (compare it with the ABBA-based Mama Mia, which did over three-quarters of its business internationally), and the more than usually quirky comedy Beetlejuice 2, a sequel to a movie that, if a good solid hit in North America, made barely any money internationally.

2. Hollywood's unhingedly relentless exploitation of any and every franchise it can get its hands on is far along a path of diminishing returns, working with ever-older, more obscure, less promising material. Consider how this year saw sequels to Beetlejuice, Twister and Gladiator, all of them original films made 36, 28 and 24 years ago, respectively, with none of these films having been structured in such a way that anyone but a studio executive could say "This story must continue!"--with obvious implications for the interest of the public in a follow-up. In spite of that Beetlejuice was a robust performer in North America--but not internationally, where the original didn't make so much of a splash. Meanwhile Twisters was even less promising material internationally (and even as domestic hits go, far from being as successful as the original, such that there has been a fair amount of politicized spin on the part of the media), and Gladiator 2, when compared with the real terms gross of the original or the expectations for a reasonable return on a $250 million+ production, the movie has not been all that might have been hoped for anywhere. Thus has it also gone with, for example, Ghostbusters and Mad Max's further milking of their old franchises.

3. If the more publicly available data about international filmgoing is more limited and fragmentary than that for North America, there are still signs of the contraction and fickleness seen in North America being evident there as well. In North America, pre-Great Recession, Americans "went to the movies" 4-5 times a year, and still 3-4 times a year in the decade after. By contrast in 2022, 2023 and 2024 they went about twice a year--while elsewhere moviegoing had less way to fall. (The average in Germany and Japan was closer to one trip a year than two even before the pandemic.) At the same time it is plausible that just like Americans international audiences are getting tired of seeing the same genres and franchises and material generally over and over again, so that not only is the overall market shrinking, but something a little more idiosyncratic and more deeply appealing is required to bring them to theaters. As we saw last year, just as the Super Mario Bros., Barbie, Oppenheimer, Five Nights at Freddy's brought out filmgoers in North America while the superhero movies (Captain Marvel 2, Aquaman 2, The Flash) and the spy-fi (Indiana Jones, Mission: Impossible) and much else supposedly reliable material disappointed, so did it go across the world (with, indeed, the international success of the weighty and unconventional Oppenheimer especially striking). Alas, the idea that Hollywood may have to get a little more creative, dialing back on the "tentpoles" as it makes smaller bets on smaller projects with a narrower but deeper appeal, is not one that it wants to hear--and thus one its courtiers are disinclined to acknowledge, especially as we head into a 2025 with a release slate in line with "business as usual," and thus very likely to put their preferred way of doing business to a severe test.