Natalie Portman plays the mighty Thor, aka Dr. Jane Foster, alongside Chris Hemsworth, who plays Thor Odinson, in Marvel’s “Thor: Love and Thunder”.
Disney
The summer box office started off with a bang, but as the season turned to fall, ticket sales skyrocketed.
Paramount and Skydance’s “Top Gun: Maverick”, along with Disney and Marvel Studio’s “Doctor Strange in the Mulitverse of Madness,” restarted the theatrical business, drawing millions of theater visits and grossing hundreds of millions of ticket sales. The two films kick off the summer movie season, which runs from May to August, and are the two highest-grossing movies released in the country this year.
With only a handful of major summer releases, however, ticket sales dwindled into late July and dropped throughout August. In fact, the box office grossed less than $100 million in each of the last five weeks of the summer, according to data from Comscore.
“It definitely ended with a groan,” said Shawn Robbins, head of media analytics at BoxOffice.com.
Major franchises include Universal’s Disney’s “Jurassic World: Dominion”, “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” lifted the box office, but without smaller and mid-budget films to fill it. filled the void, the summer box office failed to build on its momentum.
While audiences have returned to cinemas and spent more on premium tickets and popcorn, there are lingering pandemic problems. Those issues included production shutdowns that delayed filming sessions and pressure on visual effects artists to complete projects within short deadlines.
This means that the showtimes, while being re-filled, are far from running on all cylinders. During the summer, only 22 films were shown in theaters, down 47.6% from 2019, Comscore data shows. And this is a trend that has been seen all year. From January to the end of August 2019, Hollywood released 75 films in cinemas. In 2022, so far, it has only been released 46.
Robbins said there will be more consistency between months next year.
Despite nearly 50% fewer film releases in this four-month period, the domestic box office still posted ticket sales of $3.34 billion, down just 21% from 2019 levels.
Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick”
Source: Paramount
“The results are impressive,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “Summer movies like ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, ‘Doctor Strange 2’, ‘Jurassic World: Dominion,’ and others, have passed their weight in May, June and July, no driving only revenue but also confidence in the industry post-migrate accordingly and commencing between 2020 and 2021.”
“However, the fall in fall has left the business industry with a bit of a post-summer hangover with worries that there are only a handful of obvious blockbusters waiting to bolster their fortunes,” he said. box office luck in the third quarter,” he said.
As it stands, only four blockbusters will hit theaters before the end of December, including Warner Bros. ‘ “Black Adam” in October, Disney’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Strange World” in November, and Disney’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” in December.
By comparison, in 2019, there are nearly two dozen blockbuster-style films scheduled to premiere in the last four months of the year, including “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” “Jumanji: The Next Level,” and “Jumanji: The Next Level.” Frozen II.”
Domestic box office receipts have reached about $5.3 billion since January, down about 31 percent from 2019, but are still on track for total ticket sales of about $7.5 billion, Dergarabedian said. la at the end of this year.
“Honestly, that’s a great result for an industry that sees 2020 levels just $2.3 billion and 2021 levels $4.6 billion,” he said.
Next year looks stronger. The calendar has had significantly more titles, as well as a more diverse collection of genres and budgets, including Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”, “Dungeons & Dragons” and “John Wick 4” “.
“The year 2023 makes things a lot easier,” said Robbins.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.
