THB #456: A Look Into 2024 At The Box Office

It isn’t terribly promising.

Through the first 8 months of the year (34 weekends), there are only 42 new wide release films on the schedule at this point. Last year, there were 77.

How can movie theaters even try to compete with even 2023 with 46% fewer movies?

2023 took at $1.5 billion, 21% leap over 2022. As some writers love to squeal, it still isn’t what it was in 2019 or 2018 (the #1 and #3 highest grossing domestic years in history, pre-COVID). But the increase this year suggests a pretty full recovery of the marketplace… but not of the amount and range of product being brought to market.

Consider also…

910 total releases in 2019 and 993 releases in 2018 VS 498 releases in 2022 and 581 releases this year. So 2023 will be just 27% off of the 2019 grosses… with 33% fewer films in release.

See the correlation?

It is fair to look at the Top 10 of 2019 and 2023 and see that this year was still a billion off (domestically) from that 2019 group. However… 2019’s Top 10 is all top-end franchise IP, whereas the last 2 entries in 2023’s Top 10 are stand-alone Sound of Freedom and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and as great as #5 Oppenheimer did, it is still an stand-alone.

In the second half of the Top 10 (6-10), the difference between Captain Marvel, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Aladdin, Joker, and Jumanji 2 vs The Little Mermaid, Ant-Man 3, John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, and Taylor Swift was $766 million.

Of course, in the end, none of that really matters so much. It is important perspective as so many journalists misguide the public about what the status of theatrical is. But the bottom line asks no questions.

I do. 7 very specific questions…