Big guns can’t stop Hollywood’s slide
There’s a scene in Top Gun: Maverick where Tom Cruise’s piloting skills are put to the test against a handful of Russian stealth fighter jets. Because our hero is better than the bad guys, quality triumphs over quantity and (spoiler alert) Maverick makes it home in time for tea and medals.
Yet for all the romance of Cruise’s glorious return to the cockpit, Hollywood is learning that when it comes to making movies in a post-pandemic world, more is better.
Though there have been a few box office highlights in 2022, including The Batman, Jurassic World Dominion and Avatar: The Way of Water, not even Pete ‘‘Maverick’’ Mitchell or Bruce Wayne could revive the fortunes of cinema.
The global box office fell about US$16 billion (NZ$25.2b) short of 2019’s total, the last pre-Covid year, according to Gower Street, a film industry analytics firm. Among the flops were Disney’s Toy Story spin-off Lightyear, the #MeToo drama She Said, and Babylon, starring Brad Pitt, all of which failed to attract audiences.
David A Gross, who runs movie consultancy Franchise Entertainment Research, said 2022 had been a ‘‘wildly uneven year’’ at the box office, and blamed a sparse release schedule for the stalled momentum.
In the United States, there were just over 100 films on wide release this year, a drop from 138 in 2019 and 152 in 2018, according to Gross.
‘‘The release schedule showed the impact of the pandemic – movies take at least 12 to 18 months to produce and release, sometimes longer, and so with the disruptions from the pandemic, the schedule in 2022 was simply thin,’’ he said. This resulted in relatively low box office takings.
In North America, ticket sales were down more than 30% on 2019. Analysts expect revenues from the US and Canada to reach about US$7.7b (NZ$12.1b) compared with US$11.4b (NZ$18b) in 2019.
Internationally the picture is just as bleak, with China’s Covid lockdowns and Hollywood’s boycott of Russia further denting studios’ bottom lines.
Gross said the greater quality of home entertainment setups had not helped Hollywood’s push to get moviegoers back into cinemas – but the industry retained an edge on its more expensive rivals.
‘‘The convenience of staying home and watching on a big-screen TV is strong competition,’’ he said. ‘‘But moviegoing still has a number of structural advantages as an out-ofhome entertainment, including that the big screen is the best way to experience a film, and even with ticket prices increasing, it remains a very good value compared with, say, a music concert, a live theatre show, or a sporting event.’’
There are reasons for Hollywood to be optimistic going into 2023.
Business should improve with more films on the release schedule. Highlights include Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and another Cruise action sequel in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Pt 1. Gower Street forecasts that the global box office will reap US$29b (NZ$45.6b) in 2023, about US$3.2b (NZ$5b) more than 2022 but roughly US$13b (NZ$20.4b) less than 2019.