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Box office receipts are expected to hit Hollywood’s post-pandemic efforts in 2024, bringing in just $7.5 billion to $8 billion, compared to $8.8 billion to $8.9 billion this year.
“It’s a disaster,” one unnamed studio executive told The Hollywood Reporter.
In general, due to the postponement of films from 2024 to 2025, the global box office may lose $ 2 billion – in particular, the next part of the “Mission Impossible” series with Tom Cruise, “Captain America: Brave New World” from Marvel, “Snow White” with Rachel Zegler from Disney, Sony’s next Spider-Man film, including Blade, Elio, Thunder and Dirty Dancing, received later dates when the strikes began.
“The reality is that the box office is not what it used to be. In the past few years, there have been two seismic shocks—first the pandemic and now the strikes. At the same time, streaming also contributed,” says analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Ventures.
Now, few are convinced that the US box office can return to the previous levels of $11 billion a year. Earnings in 2023 are also unlikely to exceed $9 billion, as predicted after a gloomy November.
“Consumer interest in watching movies has changed forever, and the audience has become more selective,” says Greenfield.
A national research group, meanwhile, has released its 2023 findings and 2024 forecast, and what’s most shocking about it is the year-over-year decline in theater production. As of December, there were only 82 of them compared to 97-99 last year (in the previous year, 2019, for example, there were 120).
Meanwhile, thanks in large part to Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” summer 2023 revenues nearly matched pre-pandemic levels and rose 19% over the same period in 2022.
In contrast to the summer performance, the spring and early winter box office was disappointing, with November takings down 43% from the five-year average before the pandemic, the worst monthly drop since Covid. And how can we not mention the “Marvels”, which proved to be tired of superheroics and failed at the box office with less than $100 million in earnings in the US (Disney eventually decided not to report on the film’s box office “gains”), as well as “The Desire”, which added another big flop for the studio under Bob Iger.
In the past, the holiday season has helped shape a decent total — last year, for example, Avatar: The Last Airbender alone earned $400 million in the U.S. between December 12 and 31. The current Christmas list includes Wonka, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, The Color Purple, Ferrari and Boat Boys.
Timothée Chalamet’s Wonka musical grossed $151.4 million worldwide, while Hunger Games prequel’s global box office hit $300 million
At the beginning of 2025, all hopes will be placed on the second part of “Dune”, which will debut in March; also a little earlier, in January, the Paramount musical “Crazy Girls” and in February the biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” will be released. Meanwhile, box-office analysts are more optimistic about the second half of the year, which is expected to include Deadpool 3 (which will be the only Marvel film to be released in 2024), Jigsaw 2 and Despicable Me 4. The summer release also includes Furiosa: Mad Max. Saga” with Anya Taylor-Joy, and the end of the year – “Mufasa: The Lion King”, “Karate Kid 2” and “Sonic 3”.
Universal has the most movies planned for 2024 of any major studio. Although a smaller-scale film announcement could come at any time — A24, for example, already has “Civil War” scheduled for April, and Focus Features’ Emmy Winehouse biopic “Back to Black” will be released in early May. Lionsgate also appears to have an eleventh “Dust” slated for a September 2024 release, and Blumhouse and Universal just announced they’ll open The Wolf Man in late October. Disney is preparing for cinemas the films that were released on streaming during the pandemic era – “Soul”, “I am the Panda” and “Luca”.
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