Hollywood’s movie factories operate on conventional wisdom: long-held notions, based on experience, about what types of movies are likely to succeed at the global box office.
This year, the public turned many of those so-called rules upside down.
Superheroes have long been considered the most reliable way to fill seats. But characters like Captain Marvel, Flash, Ant-Man, Shazam and Blue Beetle failed to excite moviegoers. Over the weekend, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which cost more than $200 million to make and tens of millions more to market, reached a disastrous $28 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada. . Foreign moviegoers contributed another $80 million.
Meanwhile, the highest-grossing movie of the year, “Barbie,” with $1.44 billion in ticket sales worldwide, was directed by a woman, based on a very feminine toy and painted with pink spray, ingredients that most of the studies they have. It was long considered to limit audience appeal. An old movie industry maxim holds that women will go see a “man’s” movie, but not the other way around.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” raised $1.36 billion, a second result that also surprised Hollywood; Studios have a troubled history with game adaptations. “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour drama about a physicist, rounded out the top three, grossing $952 million and contradicting the prevailing belief that, in the age of streaming, adult films are not viable in theaters.
“Without a doubt, change is afoot: The public is in a different mood,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a Newsletter in box office figures. “The country and the world are not in the same place. We have had seven years of divisive politics, a serious pandemic, two serious wars and climate change. and inflation. “Moviegoers seem less interested in being overwhelmed by the spectacle and saving the universe than in being spoken to, entertained, and inspired.”
The biggest box office surprises of the year fell in the “spoken to” category. “Sound of Freedom,” a crime drama that cost $15 million to make, targeted the far right, an audience largely ignored by Hollywood, and generated $248 million in ticket sales, on par with “The Eras Tour”, whose target was Taylor. Swift fans and also cost around 15 million dollars.
“Sound of Freedom” came from Angel Studios, an independent company in Provo, Utah, which supported the film with an unorthodox “Pay It Forward” program, which allowed fans to buy tickets online for those who might not otherwise see it. they would see In a major break from Hollywood norms, Swift eliminated the middleman company (a studio) and made a distribution deal directly with AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest theater operator.
“Our phone has been off the hook since the day we announced the ‘Eras Tour’ project,” AMC CEO Adam Aron told investors on a conference call in November, referring to “alternative content” opportunities.
Comscore, which compiles box office data, projected on Sunday that North American ticket sales for the year would reach about $9 billion, a 20 percent increase from 2022. (Before the pandemic, North American theaters reliably sold around $11 billion in tickets a year). The average price of an adult general admission ticket in the United States was $12.14, up from $11.75, according to EntTelligence, a research firm.
Global ticket sales are expected to exceed $33 billion, an increase of 27 percent, partly due to an increase in Latin America. (Before the pandemic, worldwide ticket sales easily exceeded $40 billion annually.)
Hollywood’s recovery from the pandemic is expected to stall in 2024. With fewer movies scheduled for release (recent strikes disrupted studio projects), ticket sales will decline by 5 to 11 percent next year, depending on the market, according to Gower projections. Street Analytics, a box office research firm.
Reading box office tea leaves is like pontificating on symbolism in works of fiction: any halfway plausible theory works. But studio heads need something, anything, to guide them as they make billion-dollar decisions for upcoming seasons.
Here are five takeaways from this year:
Moviegoers want convenience.
People turn to nostalgia in times of stress, and films that remind audiences of the past (while still managing to feel fresh) have been successful. “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Wonka” and the retro-style film “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” allowed people to revisit their childhoods. “Insidious: The Red Door” was a huge success by bringing back the original stars of the franchise.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” could have harnessed nostalgia to become a hit. Instead, 81-year-old Harrison Ford, huffing and puffing, simply reminded Indy fans that they, too, are getting older. “Dial of Destiny” cost Disney $295 million and grossed a meager $384 million. (Movie theaters keep about 50 percent of ticket sales.)
Artistic cinema has a pulse.
Sophisticated dramas, with modest budgets and aimed at an older audience, show signs of life after two years at the UCI box office
The streaming era has forever moved most prestige movie viewing into the home, analysts say. But theaters found a modicum of success in 2023 with offerings like “Past Lives,” a melancholic drama with some Korean dialogue, and Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film “The Boy and the Heron.” The custom-built “Asteroid City” fetched $54 million.
Early box office results have also been promising for Oscar-oriented films such as “Poor Things,” a surreal sci-fi romance, and “American Fiction,” a satire about a writer who writes a fake memoir that addresses racial stereotypes.
Bigger is not better.
For the past decade, Hollywood has kept audiences interested in sequels by making each installment more bloated and often pointless than the last. Larger! Faster! Further!
That strategy may need to be rethought: It’s simply too expensive, analysts say, especially now that Chinese moviegoers are angry at American blockbusters. “Fast By comparison, “Furious 7” in 2015 cost $190 million and grossed $1.5 billion, including $391 million in China.
Tom Cruise’s seventh show, “Mission: Impossible,” released in July after “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” cost about $290 million and grossed $568 million, including $49 million in China. The sixth “Mission: Impossible” in 2018 cost $178 million and generated $792 million, with Chinese ticket buyers contributing $181 million.
Increasingly, franchise sequels and spin-offs need to feel fresh to be successful. Lionsgate, for example, delved into the High Table underground criminal organization in “John Wick: Chapter 4” and introduced “Hunger Games” fans to a new plot (and cast) in the prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and snakes.” Both films were hits. Lionsgate even revived its “Saw” horror franchise by moving the narrative back in time.
“Each of those movies did something different than the last,” said Adam Fogelson, vice president of Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “It wasn’t just ‘spend more, make it bigger, make it louder, and put more action in.’”
Some audience patterns remain intact.
Horror continued to perform reliably, with “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “M3gan” launching new franchises for Universal and its Blumhouse subsidiary. Together, the two films cost $32 million. They raised a combined total of $469 million. Also notable was “The Nun II,” which cost Warner Bros. around $38 million and grossed $268 million.
Superheroes may be down, but not out. Marvel’s fun, established “Guardians of the Galaxy” series returned for a third installment and generated $846 million against a $250 million budget. Sony’s bold anime-influenced film “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” cost approximately $150 million and grossed $691 million.
The stars matter.
Conventional wisdom in Hollywood has been that movie stars are essentially a part of the past. The name of a celebrity above the title no longer carries as much weight with ticket buyers. The underlying “intellectual property” is what fills the seats.
People pay to see Barbie, not Margot Robbie.
Except Mattel and several studios tried for at least 20 years to turn the toy into a live-action movie star. It took Ms. Robbie in the role (and Ryan Gosling as Ken) to finally make this happen. Other films that benefited from star power in 2023 included “Wonka,” with Timothée Chalamet, and “Creed III,” led by Michael B. Jordan.
Are the stars weightless? Try telling that to the producers of “Gran Turismo,” “Haunted Mansion,” “Dumb Money” and “Strays,” all of which disappointed at the box office and arrived when their casts were banned from promoting their work because of SAG. AFTRA strike.
