The Report

number of wide releases was down 35 percent from pre-pandemic times.” Handler projects a 10 percent bump in domestic revenue in 2023, to $8.1 billion. One studio executive, speaking to THR, notes that the concern is “about the quality of the movies and differentiating what you see at home from the big-screen experience.”

When business was at its busiest in June and July, domestic box office revenue was down just 14 or 15 percent from 2019, the year before the COVID-19 crisis struck. But, at times last year, revenue was down as much as 40 percent from 2019.

Christmas in particular was brutal, even as James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water sprinted past the $1.4 billion mark at the worldwide box office by the end of the long New Year’s weekend. DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish was the latest animated offering to disappoint (Illumination and Universal’s Minions: The Rise of Gru was the only animated tentpole of 2022 to really work in theaters). And Paramount watched Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, budgeted at $78 million, bomb after an otherwise stellar year for the studio. “You can’t underestimate the overall value of animated films to the box office. Without them, it leaves a big hole,” notes a studio insider. “I make the same argument for adult dramas and comedies. Without a breadth of titles, exhibition is lost.”

Adds a top distributor: “I don’t think we’ll know the state of the box office recovery until we have a more robust release calendar. There’s still not enough titles in 2023.”