It’s a bird ... it’s a plane ... it’s a summer of bummer for Hollywood box office
After uninspiring debut for ‘The Fall Guy,’ nation’s theaters learn what a lack of tentpoles can mean for the bottom line
Movie critics may be tired of superheroes, sequels and remakes. But Hollywood and the nation’s movie theaters are finding out what a lack of spandex, capes and other hallmarks of billiondollar action means for the box office.
It’s not pretty.
With only one superhero film on the schedule (Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool & Wolverine”) — and few other major franchise pictures to compensate — the summer box office is expected to generate $3 billion in ticket sales from the U.S. and Canada.
The key popcorn movie season, which starts the first weekend of May and ends Labor Day, is crucial for studios and multiplexes, traditionally accounting for about 40% of annual domestic sales.
A $3-billion haul would be an ugly result, thanks in part to production delays caused by the writers’ and actors’ strikes, as well as budgetconscious pullbacks at the studios. Last year’s miraculous “Barbenheimer”-fueled summer topped $4 billion. In the pre-COVID-19 times, a summer tally over $4 billion came to be expected practically as a matter of course every year.
The last time the season’s box office was as low as $3 billion (not counting the pandemic-afflicted years of 2020 and 2021) was in 2000, when movie tickets were cheaper than they are now.
In a highly unusual circumstance, this year’s summer box office kicked off without a superhero movie, and it showed. Universal’s “The Fall Guy,” starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, opened with a disappointing $27.7 million, despite solid reviews and popular lead actors. (The production budget was high, at a reported $130 million, not counting marketing costs.) The weekend’s top 10 movies grossed just $68 million, down 56% year-overyear, according to Roth MKM analyst Eric Handler.
“Right now, cinema operators are in need of a significant content infusion,” Handler wrote in a note to clients. “Not only is the volume of content down in [the second quarter], but it also lacks sizzle.”
The numbers are just the latest indication of how the movie industry’s six-month production pause has hampered a business that was already struggling to recover from the pandemic and swimming upstream against changing audience habits and preferences.
The poor results were long forecast, but that doesn’t make them any easier to overcome for an industry that seems to be in a bit of psychological malaise as it waits for yet another major studio, Paramount, to be sold or merged.
April was particularly stark. David A. Gross, who runs a movie consultancy, wrote in his FranchiseRe newsletter that last month’s domestic box office was down nearly 48% compared with the three-year pre-pandemic average. Revenue generated from January through April was down 43% compared with pre-COVID levels. There’s just no sugarcoating those figures. Even mid-April’s CinemaCon, the theater owners’ annual Las Vegas pep rally, was more subdued than usual.
While this summer is likely to be a slow burn overall, there are some films that could stand out.
This weekend Disney released “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” which is tracking for an opening of $55 million to $60 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to analysts. Later this month, Warner Bros.’ “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and Sony’s “Garfield” debut on the same day. June looks slim, with Sony’s “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” as the biggest titles. July should get a huge boost from Illumination’s “Despicable Me 4.”
But the biggest issue is that there just aren’t enough big movies to fill the schedule, says David Herrin, founder and chief executive of tracking firm the Quorum. That leaves some spans where there aren’t any major studio films opening, such as the week after Memorial Day and the weekend of June 21 (when Focus Features’ “The Bikeriders” is the lone new wide-release entry of significance).
“We have so many vacant weekends this summer, which is just kind of unheard of,” Herrin said. “Maybe it’s the strikes, maybe it’s movies getting pushed, maybe it’s the studios just not making as many movies as they used to, but you’ve got these pockets where there just isn’t anything that’s going to move the needle in terms of the box office. That’s good for the holdovers, but it’s bad for exhibition and it’s bad for the industry.”
Getting beyond the big picture, Herrin expects several subplots to play out over the summer.
One could be a return to form for Disney, with franchise titles “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2” — both of which are safe bets on beloved intellectual property — likely to do serious business. That should help the company overcome some of the negative press it received in recent months as it released multiple flops, including “The Marvels” and “Haunted Mansion.”
“If those don’t work, then there’s some real problems with Disney,” Herrin said.
Other studios have serious gambles on their slates, including Warner Bros.’ “Horizon: An American Saga,” a two-part Kevin Costner western epic. The season also will see the release of several prequels: “Furiosa,” “A Quiet Place: Day One” and “The Strangers: Chapter 1.” Herrin is closely watching the prerelease audience data for each of them to see if there’s as much of an appetite for prequels as the studios seem to think there is.
Meanwhile, horror movies — which until recently were the studios’ one sure bet — are suffering from oversaturation. Will a wellmarketed scary movie, such as Neon’s “Longlegs,” stand out from the crowd after numerous mediocre efforts in the genre?
A couple of originals will try to find an audience, such as “Fly Me to the Moon,” an Apple-produced comedy/romance starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, and M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller, “Trap.” “These are movies that we should be watching closely with the hope that they succeed, because if they succeed, that speaks to a healthy theatrical market,” Herrin said.