Bye Bye, Tentpoles; Hello, Winter Chill in Theaters

Concerns that box office revenue would decline as major studio titles were delayed to 2025 weren’t unfounded — but January’s was the worst in 25 years

Cinema operators might be wishing for their own atmospheric river storms right about now, at least figuratively speaking. Heading into the new year, longrange forecasts showed the box office facing a bad drought during the first two months of 2024, and they were unfortunately spot-on. The culprit? A sparse crop of new Hollywood studio titles as a result of production delays caused by last year’s strikes and a less-thanmemorable class of year-end holiday holdovers to goose January’s bottom line.

Domestic box office revenue year-to-date of $581.2 million is running 43 percent behind the average haul during the same time period in 2016-19, when movie ticket sales clocked in as high as $1.08 billion, according to data provided by Comscore for Jan. 1-Feb. 4.

Of that, January clocked in at $513.6 million, compared to $599 million in 2023 (a breakout hit last year was M3GAN, with more than $83 million in ticket sales domestically, while

Avatar: The Way of Water’s contributed more than $210 million). Outside of the COVID-era years, $513.6 million is the lowest showing for January in more than 25 years. There were at least two weekends in the latter part of the month when there wasn’t a new wide studio release, followed by Apple’s big-budget Argylle failing miserably when launching to $17.5 million domestic during the Feb. 2-4 weekend. Solid January successes included carryover Timothée Chalamet holiday musical Wonka, which was the month’s top contributor at $62.9 million (its total domestic earnings are north of $201 million), and Mean Girls, which earned $62 million.

February is also looking rough. Last year, there was a steady stream of new releases, including Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the octogenarian comedy 80 for Brady, Knock at the Cabin and instant cult classic Cocaine Bear. In terms of studio fare, February 2024’s lineup is largely anchored by Valentine’s Day and Presidents Day weekend. That’s when the Kingsley Ben-Adir starrer One Love: Bob Marley goes up against Sony’s superhero pic Madame Web, starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney. Tracking shows both films opening in the $25 million to $33 million range, which would be a sobering sum for a superhero film. (Some think One Love could even beat Madame Web, which would contribute to these upside-down times.)

Analysts across the board expect the pace to pick up March 1 when Dune: Part Two finally opens, followed by Kung Fu Panda 4 (March 8), Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (March 22) and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (March 29). Notes one top studio executive, “Exhibitors will certainly continue to hold their breath for the next few weeks.”