I recently had something to say of the non-appearance of Deadline's Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament and its revelation of Hollywood's biggest moneymakers and money-losers of 2025, and specifically my guesses as to why it hasn't happened. (Short version: very possibly squeamishness about another lousy year for a Hollywood that may not be able to take much more, and the inhibitions created by all the merger-and-acquisition intrigue.) But I imagine most of those who have found their way to this blog because of their interest in the box office would be more interested in knowing what the list would be likely to contain rather than why it hasn't appeared. Again, I don't pretend to have inside info, but I have been looking at these numbers for a while, and I'm not entirely uncomfortable hazarding some estimates--to which estimates I devote this post.
Insofar as last year's list is concerned it seems to me that you can expect that if there were a tournament this year Zootopia 2 would be the Most Valuable Blockbuster by a long way given its combination of the year's highest gross (nearly $1.9 billion!) with its budget ($150 million, less than 1/12th as much). Beyond that it gets trickier but the live-action Lilo & Stitch, A Minecraft Movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash, and Jurassic World: Rebirth would most likely round out the top five. Given the extremely high outlay on Avatar (leaving it with a break-even point possibly as high as $1.3 billion, not much below the $1.5 billion it did make), the numbers I have seen have Lilo & Stitch (a $100 million budget and a gross a bit over $1 billion) the best bet for number two, with a Minecraft movie that cost somewhat more and made just a little less ($150 million) a safe bet for number three, and Avatar and Jurassic Park competing for the next two spots, with the question whether the $200 million production that grossed nearly $900 million, or the possibly $400 million movie that grossed $1.5 billion, had the bigger margin between outlay and revenue. My guess is that Avatar would come out ahead, but not by all that much. Meanwhile it is not wholly out of the question that there might be competition for the number five position from the horror film The Conjuring: The Last Rites, again because of its having made its more modest sum on a (much) smaller budget (the $55 million production taking in a half billion dollars).
Speaking of lower-budgeted films I imagine that the low-cost, high-grossing The Housemaid would make the top ten (as far down as the list usually goes these days), and probably do better than the bottom as it comes in ahead of higher-grossing but much higher-budgeted movies (having pulled in $400 million on a $35 million budget). Final Destination: Bloodlines, which made somewhat less while costing only somewhat more ($318 million on a $50 million budget) could also place in the top ten. This is because when we look to the more conventional, non-horror blockbusters we see a crop of films that cost as much as the biggest movies but made not much more than The Conjuring--the live-action How to Train Your Dragon, F1: The Movie, Superman, The Fantastic Four: First Steps all priced at $200 million+, and Wicked: For Good perhaps not much less ($150 million is the figure we hear quoted), even as their grosses were all in the $520-$630 million range. I imagine that films from this lot would fill what gaps in the top ten the aforementioned movies leave, but again find the competition among them for the few remaining spots in those lower ranks too close to be worth calling.
As to the separate "small budgets, big profits" list, it seems to me easy to picture, per the norm of recent years, horror films once again king in 2025. Sinners, which in spite of its real North American success, made too little internationally and cost too much for the top ten would also not be represented here because its $90 million+ disqualifies it from "small budget," all as I have a hard time seeing the relatively high cost and not so high-grossing 28 Years Later appearing here either. However, should the final Final Destination miss the top ten list it would certainly be present, as would Weapons, Black Phone 2--and maybe Five Nights at Freddy's 2
Where the flops are concerned--well, there happen to be no shortage of candidates here. The live-action Snow White would probably headline the list--but Tron: Ares, which made even less while possibly costing about as much, ought to be competitive, and failing its getting the #1 position a solid contender for the #2 spot. Elio, which cost $150 million and only grossed $150 million, could be competitive with Tron. And I wonder about the two lower-grossing Marvel Cinematic Universe films that year, The Thunderbolts and Captain America 4, given their $400 million takes and very high budgets. Certainly if Captain America 4 was as expensive as some say ($380 million!) it might actually head the list. Otherwise the two movies might squeak past the break-even point. Still, it would seem that just as Disney could seem to have had a sensational year with Zootopia and Lilo & Stitch (and Avatar) it also took a beating with these other five films in a perfect demonstration of the way that its sticking to the ruthless adherence to the franchise strategy that had it cranking out billion-dollar hits assembly-line style in the '10s (with seven in 2019 alone) that so impressed the Ben Fritzes of the entertainment press is today yielding very uneven results.
Saturday, August 8, 2026
Why Has There Been No Deadline Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament 2025?
For many of those who follow the box office these days Deadline magazine's annual Most Valuable Blockbuster "tournament"--their analysts' report ranking Hollywood's biggest profit- and loss-makers during the preceding year, colorfully organized as the film business' equivalent of March Madness (complete with the capping of the tournament illustrated with a photo-shopped picture of the "MVB"'s director(s) making a slam dunk)--is something of an eventual event. However, at the time of this writing it is mid-July without 2025's tournament even having started, or even any sign that it ever will start.
I don't have any inside info here. But I also think there is a very obvious possible explanation--namely that amid the present hard times for Hollywood, and the big studio buyouts, there is more than the usual squeamishness about shining a spotlight on the facts of the situation, certainly at a Hollywood "Establishment" publication like the Penske-owned magazine Deadline. After all, just consider the history of the "tournament." Deadline first held a tournament for 2013 (the following March madness season, of course) and then held one annually thereafter for the next six straight years (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. There were no tournaments for the next two years (2020 and 2021) because of the extreme disruption of the box office by the pandemic, but the magazine resumed the tradition with a tournament for 2022, and continued with tournaments for 2023 and 2024.
Of course, the gross in 2022 was just a bit over half the pre-pandemic norm when adjusted for inflation. However, that was an immense improvement over 2020-2021, with the performance of the Spider-Man, Top Gun and Avatar sequels especially reassuring to those hoping business would soon return to normal by showing that would-be blockbusters could still reap ten figure grosses; attribute the fact that it hadn't in 2022 was a matter of the year's having fewer big movies out than usual; and expect that with the following year's "normal"-sized release slate of big movies the box office would zoom back to where it had been before COVID-19, and everyone be able to look back on the blow the pandemic dealt the movie business as something they had all got over, with 2022 a milestone in the recovery. (We did it! Yay us!) However, it didn't work out that way, with 2023, in spite of being far more packed with big movies, not seeing Hollywood gross much more than it did in 2022, the packed slate instead producing a very large number of severe underperformers. (Remember the DCEU's The Flash? The Marvels? Indiana Jones 5?)
Taking in the picture at year's end I argued that the box office of 2023 bespoke structural changes in the market, specifically that American movie going had fallen for the long haul (from 3-4 per capita movie ticket sales to not much more than 2); that this meant as many movies as before were chasing perhaps just two-thirds as many dollars; that big franchise films especially were going to have a rough time not only because of their high budgets, but because those billion-dollar grosses depended on their drawing the casual moviegoer not so easily won now; that in fact if you wanted people to use one of their two trips to the theater this year for your movie, so to speak, you had to really excite them by offering something they really, really wanted rather than grinding out more sequels and prequels no one ever asked for--perhaps something "completely different." (Thus was it the case that without the non-franchise films Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, and less expected hits from an animated Super Mario Bros. film to a Taylor Swift concert film, the unenviable situation would have been even worse still.)
Of course, that wasn't what the Hollywood Establishment wanted to hear, and so everyone who talked that way was ignored (and not only when they were doing so on a humble blog like this one). Instead said Establishment preferred to scapegoat Hollywood's workers, whining about the strikes and the way they delayed some releases and undermined publicity for others--and speak "adults in the room" stupidities about Marvel's underperformance a matter of their having failed to get "better" writers and "supervise" their directors properly, which their lickspittle courtiers in the relevant corners of the press faithfully conveyed to the public in the time-honored propaganda model manner of takers of brass checks for service rendered everywhere. They also continued to cleave to these idiocies through 2024, because if that year saw the box office slip from what it had been in 2023 there was a thinner release slate due to strike-era disruptions (for which, of course, they again blamed the workers), while, at least at a glance, the list of movies that did make money was dominated by franchise films per usual, with a few of them especially encouraging to those who wanted to go on working in the same old way, particularly the animated sequel Inside Out 2, and Deadpool & Wolverine. Sure that this meant Hollywood could go back to and sustain pre-pandemic grosses with sequels to the same old franchises that no one ever asked for, the media cheered "Marvel's back!" as Disney-Marvel announced a new crop of Super Russo Brothers-directed installments of The Avengers.
Not so fast, I said, strongly suspecting that Deadpool & Wolverine was an anomaly and an outlier, and no proof of the broad demand for Marvel movies on which the Universe's backers were banking, or for that matter, any of the rest of what Hollywood was so eager to sell. But of course that wasn't what the Establishment wanted to hear that any more than they did what we had to say about 2023, and so while many of us were perfectly capable of guessing what 2025 would really be like (another 2023-like pre-pandemic slate launched into the shrunken 2025 market to chase its smaller pool of dollars held by pickier moviegoers) the Hollywood Establishment were all shocked, shocked I tells ya when 2025 gave the lie to the industry "optimism" of the preceding years, that 2023 was a fluke, that for all its troubles 2024 showed things were getting back on track, that franchise movies were still the thing, that "Marvel's back!" because it wasn't, as Captain America 4 and The Thunderbolts and the third-time-isn't-the-charm Fantastic Four film all proved, as 2025 saw theaters take in even less money than 2024 in real terms, and as a result actually make 2023 look like a good year by comparison. Indeed, even Establishment-approved commentators were starting to say "It's starting to look like the market maybe isn't going back to what it was before the pandemic . . ."
That 2025 dealt that optimism such a blow has not made the editors of publications like Deadline more eager to dig into the business' numbers, and if anything less so. Especially as 2025 piled yet another terrible year atop a half decade of on the whole atrocious ones, pushing the business closer to the brink, maybe very close indeed (however little the entertainment press admits it). Given the debt the studios had amassed even before the pandemic and the higher interest rates of the last few years, given the abundance of dodgy accounting (just consider how all those streaming revenues involve related-party deals, and the mysteries of "back catalog" value, and how often we hear a film cost far more than the studio initially admitted), I found myself thinking of Emmanuel Todd's post-Enron prediction of a massive write-down of the values of American business. Todd's prediction didn't come to pass at the time--but ever since it has felt as if it could, with Hollywood seeming to me an especially likely candidate between its vulnerabilities and all that was happening. Meanwhile the assault on Tinseltown by the swaggering "move fast and break things" idiots of Silicon Valley, which has seen a certain shiny-headed space rocket-launching individual who, if no match for Ernst Stavro Blofeld when it comes to sophistication, did what Blofeld could not by getting control of James Bond, while we all now have to look at Larry Ellison's ungulate's rear end of a face all the time because of his family's not just taking over Paramount and all connected with it, but trying to take over Warner Bros. too (as they lamely tell us that really they're not building a monopoly--Heavens no!--but saving us from one, because Netflix, with the media as obsequious as usual in repeating after them).
Still, those interested in these matters are hardly lost without Deadline's tournament, as you could probably come pretty close to what they would offer you by applying some basic rules of thumb to some fairly widely circulated information. Just remember the difference between studio net and gross on the production budget and the grain of salt with which one should accordingly take reports of figures not clearly identifying the measure; that the studios lay out a large sum beyond the production budget on the promotion and distribution of the film (sometimes as much as they spend on its production, but these days usually significantly less--the studios less prolific than before with their outlay here); that movie studios usually end up with a little under half of the reported theatrical gross; that they make a sum equivalent to 50-100 percent of that in the relatively short term from video, streaming, broadcast rights, etc., to go on top of the net (more in the case of low-grossing films, less in the case of high-grossers); and you have a rough and ready formula for broadly computing how a movie did. Thus the makers of a $150 million (net) movie probably spent $75-$150 million spent over and above the production to get it seen, meaning a net outlay of $225-$300 million. The result is that the movie could break even on as little as $225 million grossed and $110 million or so netted in the theater--yes, that little, because even if that still leaves the movie in the red the video, etc. may provide the minimum required to staunch the gap. Meanwhile if the movie pulls in $300 million it is on still surer ground, at $400 million one can be confident that it has at least broken even, and at $500 million a healthy profit is very probable, with said profit only growing north of that point (though who gets a hold of it might be up for argument, if a star got a Tom Cruise-in-Top Gun-2-like deal), with the rest likely to be a matter of the fine details, not unimportant, not without their share of surprises, but in the end unlikely to alter the big picture quite so much (e.g. "Will Megalopolis be #2 or #4 on the year's biggest flops list?"), and certainly that as given the public by the folks at Deadline.
I don't have any inside info here. But I also think there is a very obvious possible explanation--namely that amid the present hard times for Hollywood, and the big studio buyouts, there is more than the usual squeamishness about shining a spotlight on the facts of the situation, certainly at a Hollywood "Establishment" publication like the Penske-owned magazine Deadline. After all, just consider the history of the "tournament." Deadline first held a tournament for 2013 (the following March madness season, of course) and then held one annually thereafter for the next six straight years (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019. There were no tournaments for the next two years (2020 and 2021) because of the extreme disruption of the box office by the pandemic, but the magazine resumed the tradition with a tournament for 2022, and continued with tournaments for 2023 and 2024.
Of course, the gross in 2022 was just a bit over half the pre-pandemic norm when adjusted for inflation. However, that was an immense improvement over 2020-2021, with the performance of the Spider-Man, Top Gun and Avatar sequels especially reassuring to those hoping business would soon return to normal by showing that would-be blockbusters could still reap ten figure grosses; attribute the fact that it hadn't in 2022 was a matter of the year's having fewer big movies out than usual; and expect that with the following year's "normal"-sized release slate of big movies the box office would zoom back to where it had been before COVID-19, and everyone be able to look back on the blow the pandemic dealt the movie business as something they had all got over, with 2022 a milestone in the recovery. (We did it! Yay us!) However, it didn't work out that way, with 2023, in spite of being far more packed with big movies, not seeing Hollywood gross much more than it did in 2022, the packed slate instead producing a very large number of severe underperformers. (Remember the DCEU's The Flash? The Marvels? Indiana Jones 5?)
Taking in the picture at year's end I argued that the box office of 2023 bespoke structural changes in the market, specifically that American movie going had fallen for the long haul (from 3-4 per capita movie ticket sales to not much more than 2); that this meant as many movies as before were chasing perhaps just two-thirds as many dollars; that big franchise films especially were going to have a rough time not only because of their high budgets, but because those billion-dollar grosses depended on their drawing the casual moviegoer not so easily won now; that in fact if you wanted people to use one of their two trips to the theater this year for your movie, so to speak, you had to really excite them by offering something they really, really wanted rather than grinding out more sequels and prequels no one ever asked for--perhaps something "completely different." (Thus was it the case that without the non-franchise films Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, and less expected hits from an animated Super Mario Bros. film to a Taylor Swift concert film, the unenviable situation would have been even worse still.)
Of course, that wasn't what the Hollywood Establishment wanted to hear, and so everyone who talked that way was ignored (and not only when they were doing so on a humble blog like this one). Instead said Establishment preferred to scapegoat Hollywood's workers, whining about the strikes and the way they delayed some releases and undermined publicity for others--and speak "adults in the room" stupidities about Marvel's underperformance a matter of their having failed to get "better" writers and "supervise" their directors properly, which their lickspittle courtiers in the relevant corners of the press faithfully conveyed to the public in the time-honored propaganda model manner of takers of brass checks for service rendered everywhere. They also continued to cleave to these idiocies through 2024, because if that year saw the box office slip from what it had been in 2023 there was a thinner release slate due to strike-era disruptions (for which, of course, they again blamed the workers), while, at least at a glance, the list of movies that did make money was dominated by franchise films per usual, with a few of them especially encouraging to those who wanted to go on working in the same old way, particularly the animated sequel Inside Out 2, and Deadpool & Wolverine. Sure that this meant Hollywood could go back to and sustain pre-pandemic grosses with sequels to the same old franchises that no one ever asked for, the media cheered "Marvel's back!" as Disney-Marvel announced a new crop of Super Russo Brothers-directed installments of The Avengers.
Not so fast, I said, strongly suspecting that Deadpool & Wolverine was an anomaly and an outlier, and no proof of the broad demand for Marvel movies on which the Universe's backers were banking, or for that matter, any of the rest of what Hollywood was so eager to sell. But of course that wasn't what the Establishment wanted to hear that any more than they did what we had to say about 2023, and so while many of us were perfectly capable of guessing what 2025 would really be like (another 2023-like pre-pandemic slate launched into the shrunken 2025 market to chase its smaller pool of dollars held by pickier moviegoers) the Hollywood Establishment were all shocked, shocked I tells ya when 2025 gave the lie to the industry "optimism" of the preceding years, that 2023 was a fluke, that for all its troubles 2024 showed things were getting back on track, that franchise movies were still the thing, that "Marvel's back!" because it wasn't, as Captain America 4 and The Thunderbolts and the third-time-isn't-the-charm Fantastic Four film all proved, as 2025 saw theaters take in even less money than 2024 in real terms, and as a result actually make 2023 look like a good year by comparison. Indeed, even Establishment-approved commentators were starting to say "It's starting to look like the market maybe isn't going back to what it was before the pandemic . . ."
That 2025 dealt that optimism such a blow has not made the editors of publications like Deadline more eager to dig into the business' numbers, and if anything less so. Especially as 2025 piled yet another terrible year atop a half decade of on the whole atrocious ones, pushing the business closer to the brink, maybe very close indeed (however little the entertainment press admits it). Given the debt the studios had amassed even before the pandemic and the higher interest rates of the last few years, given the abundance of dodgy accounting (just consider how all those streaming revenues involve related-party deals, and the mysteries of "back catalog" value, and how often we hear a film cost far more than the studio initially admitted), I found myself thinking of Emmanuel Todd's post-Enron prediction of a massive write-down of the values of American business. Todd's prediction didn't come to pass at the time--but ever since it has felt as if it could, with Hollywood seeming to me an especially likely candidate between its vulnerabilities and all that was happening. Meanwhile the assault on Tinseltown by the swaggering "move fast and break things" idiots of Silicon Valley, which has seen a certain shiny-headed space rocket-launching individual who, if no match for Ernst Stavro Blofeld when it comes to sophistication, did what Blofeld could not by getting control of James Bond, while we all now have to look at Larry Ellison's ungulate's rear end of a face all the time because of his family's not just taking over Paramount and all connected with it, but trying to take over Warner Bros. too (as they lamely tell us that really they're not building a monopoly--Heavens no!--but saving us from one, because Netflix, with the media as obsequious as usual in repeating after them).
Still, those interested in these matters are hardly lost without Deadline's tournament, as you could probably come pretty close to what they would offer you by applying some basic rules of thumb to some fairly widely circulated information. Just remember the difference between studio net and gross on the production budget and the grain of salt with which one should accordingly take reports of figures not clearly identifying the measure; that the studios lay out a large sum beyond the production budget on the promotion and distribution of the film (sometimes as much as they spend on its production, but these days usually significantly less--the studios less prolific than before with their outlay here); that movie studios usually end up with a little under half of the reported theatrical gross; that they make a sum equivalent to 50-100 percent of that in the relatively short term from video, streaming, broadcast rights, etc., to go on top of the net (more in the case of low-grossing films, less in the case of high-grossers); and you have a rough and ready formula for broadly computing how a movie did. Thus the makers of a $150 million (net) movie probably spent $75-$150 million spent over and above the production to get it seen, meaning a net outlay of $225-$300 million. The result is that the movie could break even on as little as $225 million grossed and $110 million or so netted in the theater--yes, that little, because even if that still leaves the movie in the red the video, etc. may provide the minimum required to staunch the gap. Meanwhile if the movie pulls in $300 million it is on still surer ground, at $400 million one can be confident that it has at least broken even, and at $500 million a healthy profit is very probable, with said profit only growing north of that point (though who gets a hold of it might be up for argument, if a star got a Tom Cruise-in-Top Gun-2-like deal), with the rest likely to be a matter of the fine details, not unimportant, not without their share of surprises, but in the end unlikely to alter the big picture quite so much (e.g. "Will Megalopolis be #2 or #4 on the year's biggest flops list?"), and certainly that as given the public by the folks at Deadline.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu: Thoughts on the Box Office
Of course, all that came to an end with the unfortunate prequel 2018 release Solo. In the wake of that flop Disney shelved its bigger plans, and completed only one more Star Wars film, the last of the new trilogy begun with Episode VII in 2015, which brought in another billion-dollar gross but looked far from being the king of a year dominated by the climax to another cycle about which people seemed far more excited, the Marvel Cinematic Universe's culmination in Phase Three's finale, Avengers: Endgame (a nearly three-billion dollar hit that claimed the all-time box office champion crown!), and even such other hits as the live-action adaptation of The Lion King--just "another franchise" among many in a box office where what had originally been novel about the Star Wars series had since become commonplace. As if that were not enough, the shock to everything Hollywood did by the pandemic (and one might add, the strikes of 2023) compounded the shock of the aforementioned box office reversals, producing a long dry spell in which "actually existing" new Star Wars stories were confined to small screen streaming series' (where, if the economics are comparatively opaque, one would presume them to have flourished given how prolific Disney's investment in them has been), until, following the announcement of many Star Wars projects that just never panned out (new Star Wars movies by Rian Johnson and Taika Waititi and Patty Jenkins and James Mangold, the Suits apparently asking "Who's hot right now?" and dropping their projects when they ceased to be hot, in the main because of their can't-work-within-someone-else's-franchise-because-I-am-an-arteest! auteur pretensions, inability to understand the material with which they are to work, and general stupidity, as we saw with The Last Jedi, Thor 4, Wonder Woman: 1984 and Indiana Jones 5), we finally got Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu in May 2026.
Did the new movie mark the return of Star Wars to the top of the box office? Alas, no. Indeed, it didn't even get near the billion-dollar mark, its run apparently sputtering out with just a third that sum banked, less than what Solo made back in 2018 even before we adjust for inflation--and all that, I might add, in a patch of the summer where the competition was not too strong. (It certainly wasn't as if Masters of the Universe was sucking the air out of the box office with roaring ticket sales!) Still, if one cannot call Mandalorian and Grogu a sensational performer, and indeed would be justified in regarding it as a disappointment showing how far Star Wars has fallen as a commercial force, one may be mistaken in calling it a money-loser. After all, knowing that Star Wars is just "another franchise," and at that one a half century old and very intensively (sometimes erratically) mined in recent years, its backers do not seem to have counted on its being a box office champion. Accordingly the budget, if far from small, indeed fairly respectable for a major summer release ($165 million!), was still more modest than those of many of its predecessors--a smaller production released with lower expectations that even with the far from stellar gross may well see the movie at least break even when the post-theatrical revenue is taken into account (coming on top of the $170 million or so likely to have been netted theatrically, something north of $300 million plausible, quite enough to cover not just the cost of the production but the marketing/distribution costs as well, and plausibly even turn a profit). Moreover, this particular movie had a stronger claim than most films to being judged by more than its box office given its role in shoring up the TV empire of which it is a tie-in, the back catalog value of one of the biggest franchises in history (in this case, not to be trivialized), and the merchandising value of all things related to it (which is, again, a very big deal in Star Wars' case). The result is that if the makers of Mandalorian and Grogu may reasonably have hoped for more than they got in the way of ticket sales not only may they be better than dissatisfied with the result, but, as they clearly hope that Shawn Levy, who unlike so many of the arteests to whom Disney turned in the past shown that he knows how to thrill the fan base of a creaking franchise, will score again the way he did in 2024 when Star Wars: Starfighter hits theaters a year after Mandalorian did, Memorial Day weekend 2027--and if all concerned are very, very lucky, helping establish a tradition of Memorial Day Star Wars movies, just as the Marvel Cinematic Universe did of new Marvel superhero movies on the opening weekend in May for so many years.
The New Live-Action He-Man Film: A Commercial View
I can't say that I paid much attention to the publicity attending the making and release of the live-action He-Man movie. Aside from having not paid real attention to that particular franchise for a very long time (I gave it almost no thought between the early 2000s Cartoon Network edition going off the air and the strange experience of running into a Heritage Foundation review of Kevin Smith's sequel series), it increasingly seems to me that cartoons should generally be left as cartoons rather than transformed into live-action projects where, as we are reminded again and again, much that "worked" in animated form doesn't in the live-action version and as a result either gets mutilated or chucked out or kept but only annoys everybody in doing so. Indeed, with Spider-Man having demonstrated that an animated Hollywood action movie can make real money, and the downward pressure on studio bottom lines of recent years providing an additional incentive to go the animation route (yes, you can save money this way), the studios seem to have less excuse than ever to continue along their make-the-cartoon-a-live-action-movie path not only from an artistic perspective, but the crass commercial one that is the only one the Suited vulgarians really care about, and that if they had any business sense (never mind artistic sense) they would make cartoons about cartoons as they devote their live-action filmmaking efforts to movies about, you know, people.
Meanwhile, the problems with this kind of adaptation generally aside it seemed to me that giving He-Man specifically this treatment was a dubious commercial prospect. So far as I can tell this is not a franchise whose runners have renewed their fan base by winning younger followers (as against, for instance, the evergreen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), which means that middle-aged folks are the ones who have any attachment to it, all as from the standpoint of the practicalities of exploiting a largely mined-out '80s nostalgia getting those who were kids in the '80s to go to the theater for The Power of Grayskull is probably trickier than getting them to go to the theater to satisfy the Need for Speed. In reality Top Gun may be no smarter or more "adult" as viewing goes than the stuff of a kid's cartoon from the '80s, indeed, is in many respects is less so. (Children's show that it was He-Man did in its stronger episodes rise above the same-good-guys-thrash-the-same-bad-guys-in-every-episode format, and if anything espoused a more mature value system and world-view, not least in regard to war, than the cheap pop militarism that made Top Gun such an Establishment darling.) Still, our assorted cultural prejudices mean that middle-aged dudes are probably a lot less embarrassed about buying a ticket to see Tom Cruise jump into a jet than one to see a muscleman yell "I HAVE THE POWER!" Additionally the kind of hysterical media cheerleading Top Gun 2 had on its side in the summer of '22, and which made a difference in its prospects as important as it is overlooked by the vast majority of the commentariat was not to be expected on He-Man's behalf.
But the inherently ill-conceived character of cartoon-to-live-action adaptation generally and longshot character of this project in particular weren't enough for the folks making the movie, as I found out coming into contact with the publicity for the film. Did they seriously make another live-action He-Man movie where the characters spend the movie in our world instead of Eternia, even though the fans hated that about the cheapo Cannon Films movie from '87? Yes they did--while even bringing Dolph "I have all the acting range and charisma of the solidified contents of a septic tank" Lundgren as if being reminded of his part in that unfortunate film would delight fans. (You go in for such metafictional evocation when there is affection for the old version, not when there isn't.) Did they seriously decide to make the He-Man movie a "male Barbie?" Yes they did, either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that men didn't exactly love Greta Gerwig's pour-gasoline-on-the-fire-of-the-wretched-kulturkampf epic about a fashion doll, and that those who go in for nostalgia for '80s action cartoons could be expected to have loved it less than most--the executives' "monkey see, monkey do" compulsion to imitate the nearest success simply too overwhelming for those calling the shots. Did they build this Masters-of-the-Universe-characters-running-about-on-our Earth, Dolph Lundgren-presenting, Barbie treatment on a thematic foundation of "woke gender" politics-flavored-subversion-of–the-franchise-cum-steaming-pile-of-self-help-crapola? Yes they "I'm Just Ken" did. Did the very expensive feature film these "creative decisions" produced flop hard? Yes it has, the $200 million production predictably opening with under $30 million in North America in its first Friday-to-Sunday period, and plummeting seventy percent from that low level in its second weekend on the way to a feeble final domestic tally of barely twice its opening gross ($65 million--no, good word-of-mouth did not save this one by making it "leggy"), all as it made even less money overseas on the way to a final worldwide gross in the $115 million range. A veritable box office disaster (a nine figure loss a near-certainty given the numbers we know), it reminds all who needed reminding that, however much their courtiers in the press tell us the people in the C-Suites are the smartest guys in the room, they are actually the dumbest guys in any room. Still, even seeing the film prove commercially dead on arrival I thought to myself that we might not have seen the summer's biggest flop yet as, once again, badly battered yet absolutely unteachable Hollywood releases a pre-pandemic roster of would-be blockbusters into the shrunken post-pandemic/forever COVID movie market. And indeed, as I write now (in mid-July) it seems that if the folks at Deadline are braver about holding a Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament for 2026 than they have been holding one for 2025 that other animated-to-live-action flop Moana (not Disney's first, likely not to be its last), and Supergirl, will make the rankings on the flops' list "competitive."
Meanwhile, the problems with this kind of adaptation generally aside it seemed to me that giving He-Man specifically this treatment was a dubious commercial prospect. So far as I can tell this is not a franchise whose runners have renewed their fan base by winning younger followers (as against, for instance, the evergreen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), which means that middle-aged folks are the ones who have any attachment to it, all as from the standpoint of the practicalities of exploiting a largely mined-out '80s nostalgia getting those who were kids in the '80s to go to the theater for The Power of Grayskull is probably trickier than getting them to go to the theater to satisfy the Need for Speed. In reality Top Gun may be no smarter or more "adult" as viewing goes than the stuff of a kid's cartoon from the '80s, indeed, is in many respects is less so. (Children's show that it was He-Man did in its stronger episodes rise above the same-good-guys-thrash-the-same-bad-guys-in-every-episode format, and if anything espoused a more mature value system and world-view, not least in regard to war, than the cheap pop militarism that made Top Gun such an Establishment darling.) Still, our assorted cultural prejudices mean that middle-aged dudes are probably a lot less embarrassed about buying a ticket to see Tom Cruise jump into a jet than one to see a muscleman yell "I HAVE THE POWER!" Additionally the kind of hysterical media cheerleading Top Gun 2 had on its side in the summer of '22, and which made a difference in its prospects as important as it is overlooked by the vast majority of the commentariat was not to be expected on He-Man's behalf.
But the inherently ill-conceived character of cartoon-to-live-action adaptation generally and longshot character of this project in particular weren't enough for the folks making the movie, as I found out coming into contact with the publicity for the film. Did they seriously make another live-action He-Man movie where the characters spend the movie in our world instead of Eternia, even though the fans hated that about the cheapo Cannon Films movie from '87? Yes they did--while even bringing Dolph "I have all the acting range and charisma of the solidified contents of a septic tank" Lundgren as if being reminded of his part in that unfortunate film would delight fans. (You go in for such metafictional evocation when there is affection for the old version, not when there isn't.) Did they seriously decide to make the He-Man movie a "male Barbie?" Yes they did, either oblivious or indifferent to the fact that men didn't exactly love Greta Gerwig's pour-gasoline-on-the-fire-of-the-wretched-kulturkampf epic about a fashion doll, and that those who go in for nostalgia for '80s action cartoons could be expected to have loved it less than most--the executives' "monkey see, monkey do" compulsion to imitate the nearest success simply too overwhelming for those calling the shots. Did they build this Masters-of-the-Universe-characters-running-about-on-our Earth, Dolph Lundgren-presenting, Barbie treatment on a thematic foundation of "woke gender" politics-flavored-subversion-of–the-franchise-cum-steaming-pile-of-self-help-crapola? Yes they "I'm Just Ken" did. Did the very expensive feature film these "creative decisions" produced flop hard? Yes it has, the $200 million production predictably opening with under $30 million in North America in its first Friday-to-Sunday period, and plummeting seventy percent from that low level in its second weekend on the way to a feeble final domestic tally of barely twice its opening gross ($65 million--no, good word-of-mouth did not save this one by making it "leggy"), all as it made even less money overseas on the way to a final worldwide gross in the $115 million range. A veritable box office disaster (a nine figure loss a near-certainty given the numbers we know), it reminds all who needed reminding that, however much their courtiers in the press tell us the people in the C-Suites are the smartest guys in the room, they are actually the dumbest guys in any room. Still, even seeing the film prove commercially dead on arrival I thought to myself that we might not have seen the summer's biggest flop yet as, once again, badly battered yet absolutely unteachable Hollywood releases a pre-pandemic roster of would-be blockbusters into the shrunken post-pandemic/forever COVID movie market. And indeed, as I write now (in mid-July) it seems that if the folks at Deadline are braver about holding a Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament for 2026 than they have been holding one for 2025 that other animated-to-live-action flop Moana (not Disney's first, likely not to be its last), and Supergirl, will make the rankings on the flops' list "competitive."
2026 at the Box Office: Is it 2023 All Over Again?
As I have been saying for years now 2023 was a very revealing year where the shape of the North American box office was concerned, specifically confirming that the "post-pandemic" box office is structurally much smaller than it was before the pandemic (per capita ticket sales down from 3-4 to just 2 a year); would have rather less casual movie going of the kind that helped power so many franchise films to billion-dollar grosses (by bringing out more than the hardcore fans); that the release of a pre-pandemic-style slate of big-budget movies in the new market would result in a number of underperformers comparable to what we saw in that disastrous year (the year of The Marvels, the year of The Flash); and that the winners likely to be more carefully targeted films to which a lazy, risk-shy Hollywood is generally averse (as Barbie triumphed where The Marvels failed, Oppenheimer where The Flash did). It also seemed to me that 2024 and 2025 validated that reading of the situation, and that given what we knew of the year's slate of movies 2026 only promised a repeat.
Still, I have to admit myself a bit surprised by just how closely 2026 has followed after the pattern of 2023 in respects. Once again the year had a lift at its beginning from an Avatar sequel, and at Easter saw the release of an Illumination Studios Super Mario Bros. animated movie that, while reviled by critics, may well prove the year's biggest earner--after which things went south. Once again we have seen franchise films flop one after another through the summer, in many cases the same franchises in the same ways, with Disney seeing a Lucasfilm franchise-based film and a live-action adaptation of a prior animated hit (with a nautical theme!) both underperform (Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and Moana in place of Indiana Jones 5 and The Little Mermaid). Once again we have seen a DCEU superhero film and a kulturkampfer-hated female-led superhero film flop big time (with Supergirl pulling double-duty for The Flash and The Marvels). Once again we have Christopher Nolan coming to the rescue with what would conventionally seem a rather unlikely blockbuster in its period setting and other ways in late July (with The Odyssey filling in for Oppenheimer). And once again in spite of such bright spots we have a movie season, and a cinematic year, on track to merely repeat the depressing post-pandemic pattern of big-budget failure and all-around lower grossers, with the fact that the summer season of 2023 is so much like the summer season of 2026 testament to the fact that if Hollywood has shown itself prepared to adapt in small ways (reining in its spending, taking a new interest in video game adaptations, etc.) it remains as rigid as ever in the big, still committed to the blockbuster model of filmmaking whose day it refuses to acknowledge as done because it finds the obvious alternative of actually putting in an effort so unpalatable.
Not that that's what you'll read if you pay attention to the entertainment press. At present they are pushing the narrative that this time, for reals, it's a year of recovery, with Hollywood looking at possibly having its "first $10 billion box office since 2019." Their claims are not wholly baseless, given that the box office took in $4.7 billion in the first six months of the year (as against the $4.1 billion of the prior year), such that if the pattern were to continue, with a little help from the various franchise films from which the Hollywood Establishment hopes for much (besides Spider-Man, also Dune, Jumanji and The Avengers, among others), yes, they might make $10 billion. However, they entirely overlook how if a good sound bite a $10 billion box office year is no sign of return to the pre-pandemic box office. After all, in the late '10s, with the norm grosses in the $11-$12 billion range, $10 billion would have been a bitter disappointment, even before (going by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index) inflation meant that the 2015-2019 norm was more like $15 billion in today's terms--this the mark that would really mean a return to pre-pandemic norms. Indeed, as the mathematically literate know full well, because of inflation a $10 billion gross in 2026 would only equal what Hollywood made in that disastrous year of 2023 I have been talking about--its $8.9 billion box office, because of those price rises, at least $9.7 billion in June 2026 dollars (all as, certainly to go by the priorities of those in charge, we have six more inflationary months ahead of us). The result is that rather than happy days being here again the post-pandemic/forever COVID box office would remain with us, with 2026's improvement over 2025, in its simply matching 2023's take, merely bespeaking the lowering of the bar, as it suggests the high end of the range of fluctuation of the market amid the "new normal."
All as, of course, that $10 billion is not yet actually in the till. With nearly five months left to go at this point, with the underperformance of franchise films of the expected types having continued through this year (I say again, Star Wars, DCEU, Disney animation-to-live-action); all as some of the franchise films up ahead seem like quite the gamble (2025 was a reminder that the Marvel Cinematic Universe ain't what it used to be as a box office draw, and Dune 3 a tougher sell as a mass-audience hit than its predecessors); one would be naïve to rule out the studios meeting with any more nasty surprises in 2026--such that come January the entertainment press may be telling a very different story.
Still, I have to admit myself a bit surprised by just how closely 2026 has followed after the pattern of 2023 in respects. Once again the year had a lift at its beginning from an Avatar sequel, and at Easter saw the release of an Illumination Studios Super Mario Bros. animated movie that, while reviled by critics, may well prove the year's biggest earner--after which things went south. Once again we have seen franchise films flop one after another through the summer, in many cases the same franchises in the same ways, with Disney seeing a Lucasfilm franchise-based film and a live-action adaptation of a prior animated hit (with a nautical theme!) both underperform (Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and Moana in place of Indiana Jones 5 and The Little Mermaid). Once again we have seen a DCEU superhero film and a kulturkampfer-hated female-led superhero film flop big time (with Supergirl pulling double-duty for The Flash and The Marvels). Once again we have Christopher Nolan coming to the rescue with what would conventionally seem a rather unlikely blockbuster in its period setting and other ways in late July (with The Odyssey filling in for Oppenheimer). And once again in spite of such bright spots we have a movie season, and a cinematic year, on track to merely repeat the depressing post-pandemic pattern of big-budget failure and all-around lower grossers, with the fact that the summer season of 2023 is so much like the summer season of 2026 testament to the fact that if Hollywood has shown itself prepared to adapt in small ways (reining in its spending, taking a new interest in video game adaptations, etc.) it remains as rigid as ever in the big, still committed to the blockbuster model of filmmaking whose day it refuses to acknowledge as done because it finds the obvious alternative of actually putting in an effort so unpalatable.
Not that that's what you'll read if you pay attention to the entertainment press. At present they are pushing the narrative that this time, for reals, it's a year of recovery, with Hollywood looking at possibly having its "first $10 billion box office since 2019." Their claims are not wholly baseless, given that the box office took in $4.7 billion in the first six months of the year (as against the $4.1 billion of the prior year), such that if the pattern were to continue, with a little help from the various franchise films from which the Hollywood Establishment hopes for much (besides Spider-Man, also Dune, Jumanji and The Avengers, among others), yes, they might make $10 billion. However, they entirely overlook how if a good sound bite a $10 billion box office year is no sign of return to the pre-pandemic box office. After all, in the late '10s, with the norm grosses in the $11-$12 billion range, $10 billion would have been a bitter disappointment, even before (going by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index) inflation meant that the 2015-2019 norm was more like $15 billion in today's terms--this the mark that would really mean a return to pre-pandemic norms. Indeed, as the mathematically literate know full well, because of inflation a $10 billion gross in 2026 would only equal what Hollywood made in that disastrous year of 2023 I have been talking about--its $8.9 billion box office, because of those price rises, at least $9.7 billion in June 2026 dollars (all as, certainly to go by the priorities of those in charge, we have six more inflationary months ahead of us). The result is that rather than happy days being here again the post-pandemic/forever COVID box office would remain with us, with 2026's improvement over 2025, in its simply matching 2023's take, merely bespeaking the lowering of the bar, as it suggests the high end of the range of fluctuation of the market amid the "new normal."
All as, of course, that $10 billion is not yet actually in the till. With nearly five months left to go at this point, with the underperformance of franchise films of the expected types having continued through this year (I say again, Star Wars, DCEU, Disney animation-to-live-action); all as some of the franchise films up ahead seem like quite the gamble (2025 was a reminder that the Marvel Cinematic Universe ain't what it used to be as a box office draw, and Dune 3 a tougher sell as a mass-audience hit than its predecessors); one would be naïve to rule out the studios meeting with any more nasty surprises in 2026--such that come January the entertainment press may be telling a very different story.
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