AP – Movie ticket sales took a bit of a hit in 2024. The annual domestic box office is expected to end up at around USD8.75 billion, down more than three per cent from 2023, according to estimates from Comscore.
It’s not as dire as it was in the pandemic years, but it’s also not even close to the pre-pandemic norm when the annual box office regularly surpassed USD11 billion.
This is the year the business felt the effects of the Hollywood strikes of 2023, the labor standoff that delayed productions and releases and led to a depleted calendar for exhibitors and moviegoers. And yet it’s not as bad as it could have been, or at least as bad as analysts projected at the start of the year.
“This has been a really incredible comeback story for the industry,” said senior media analyst for Comscore Paul Dergarabedian. “Just a couple of months ago it was a question of whether we would even hit USD8 billion for the year.”
Hollywood continues to learn lessons about what moviegoers really want, what works and what doesn’t. Here are the biggest takeaways from 2024.
THE STRIKE FALLOUT WAS REAL
The Hollywood strikes might have ended in 2023, putting productions back into full swing and sending stars out on the promotional circuit again – but the ripple effect of the work stoppages and contract standoffs showed their real effects on the 2024 release calendar.
The first two quarters were hit hardest, with tentpoles pushed later in the year (Deadpool & Wolverine, for one) or even into 2025 (like Mission: Impossible 8). With no Marvel movie kicking off the summer moviegoing season, the box office was down a devastating 27.5 per cent from 2023 right before Inside Out 2 opened in June.
“It’s an unpredictable business but it thrives on stability,” Dergarabedian said. “When the release calendar is thrown off, the momentum stops.”
THE PG RATING (AND ANIMATION) RULED
Sequels and franchises dominated the top 10 movies of the year, as has often been the case in the past 15 years. But this year, films carrying a PG rating did especially well, starting with the biggest movie of 2024: Inside Out 2, which also became the biggest animated movie of all time, not accounting for inflation.
Family films with a PG rating – including Despicable Me 4, Moana 2, Wicked, Kung Fu Panda 4, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Mufasa and The Wild Robot – grossed over USD2.9 billion this year, accounting for around 33 per cent of the annual box office, according to Comscore.
Movies rated PG-13, by contrast, made up about 30 per cent of ticket sales.
THE DISNEY IMPACT
After a quieter 2023 and several years without a film at the very top of the charts, the Walt Disney Co came back roaring in 2024 with three of the top five movies of the year: Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine and Moana 2. In mid-December, it crossed the USD2 billion domestic mark, the second time any studio has done so since 2019 (that was also Disney, in 2022). Its 20th Century division also played an important part with Alien: Romulus and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.
“It’s a different industry when Disney commits to theatrical releases,” said executive at the movie data and analytics trade The Boxoffice Company Daniel Loria.
LOOKING AT ‘FLOPS’ A DIFFERENT WAY
Every year has high-profile flops and disappointments, and this was no exception. Sony had a rough go with its Spider-Man adjacent titles like Madame Web and Kraven the Hunter (but this also seems to be the fate lately for anyone not named Deadpool).
Universal had higher hopes for The Fall Guy, as did Warner Bros for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Joker: Folie à Deux.
Then there were the filmmaker-driven (and financed) passion projects that failed to take off like Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 and Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis.
“It’s a reductive way of thinking about those passion projects,” Loria said. “Those movies didn’t come out with huge expectations, meaning theaters didn’t clear out the house and give them three auditoriums per site in hopes for money to come in.”
This was, however, part of the problem with Joker 2, which was expected to be more in line with the first which made over USD1 billion. But even that has a caveat, Loria thinks.
“It wasn’t just that Joker didn’t perform, it’s that there was nothing coming in behind it to make up that momentum,” Loria said. “That’s more the fault of a release schedule where one movie is supposed to carry a month. That model doesn’t work anymore.”
AUDIENCES CRAVE OPTIONS AND A DIVERSE LINEUP
What does work, Loria said, is a diverse lineup, with the Thanksgiving and Christmas successes being the perfect example. At Thanksgiving, there was Wicked, Gladiator II and Moana 2. The holidays had Mufasa, Sonic 3, and a lot of adult offerings too, including Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown and Babygirl. Horror is often the safest bet for theatrical, but this year had even veterans pleasantly surprised by just how enthusiastic that audience can be, with hits like Longlegs, Nosferatu, Terrifier 3 and Smile 2 getting people out of the house.
The Blake Lively drama It Ends With Us, which had its share of ongoing off-screen drama as well, also became an event. Audiences turned out for smart thrillers, like Conclave as well as unexpected originals including Anora, The Substance and The Brutalist.
NOSTALGIA AND THE ALLURE OF A RE-RELEASE
Re-releases of movies in theaters that are also widely available in the home thrived this year. Some of the biggest successes included Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Coraline and The Phantom Menace.
“It just shows our industry once again that audiences truly understand the difference between a communal, big screen theatrical experience that they crave even on films that they’ve had the opportunities to see in the home,” Nolan said in December. “That theatrical experience that we all know and love is so powerful and so exciting. It’s a very clear demonstration of it.” – Lindsey Bahr
