Box Office Lessons 2023: Audiences Seeked Solace, Skipped Spectacle

Hollywood’s film factories run on conventional wisdom: deeply held ideas, based on experience, about what types of films are likely to hit the global box office.

This year the public has turned many of those so-called rules on their heads.

Superheroes have long been seen as the most reliable way to fill seats. But characters like Captain Marvel, the Flash, Ant-Man, Shazam and Blue Beetle failed to captivate moviegoers. Over the weekend, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” which cost more than $200 million to make and tens of millions more to market, grossed a disastrous $28 million in ticket sales in the United States and Canada. Foreign moviegoers donated another $80 million.

Meanwhile, the year’s biggest movie at the box office, “Barbie,” with $1.44 billion in worldwide ticket sales, was directed by a woman, based on a very feminine toy and pink-sprayed ingredients that most studios have. long seen as limiting its audience appeal. An old maxim from the film industry states that women will go to a ‘men’s film’, but not the other way around.

“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” collected $1.36 billion, a second-place result that also surprised Hollywood; studios have a checkered history with game adaptations. “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour period drama about a physicist, rounded out the top three, grossing $952 million and contradicting the prevailing belief that adult films are not viable in theaters in the streaming age.

“There’s no doubt that change is coming — audiences are in a different mood,” said David A. Gross, a book-publishing film consultant. newsletter on cash register numbers. “The country and the world are not in the same place. We’ve had seven years of divisive politics, a serious pandemic, two serious wars, climate change and inflation. Moviegoers seem less interested in being overwhelmed by spectacle and saving the universe than in being engaged, entertained and inspired.”

The biggest box office surprises of the year fell into 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, comparable to “The Eras Tour,” which focused on Taylor pointed. Swift fans and also cost about $15 million.

“Sound of Freedom” came from Angel Studios, an independent company in Provo, Utah, which supported the film with an unorthodox “Pay It Forward” program, allowing supporters to purchase tickets online for those who might not otherwise see the film. In a major break from Hollywood norms, Ms. Swift cut out the middle company (a studio) and signed a distribution deal directly with AMC Entertainment, the world’s largest theater operator.

“Our phone has been ringing off the hook since the day we announced the ‘Eras ​​Tour’ project,” AMC CEO Adam Aron told investors on a November conference call, referring to the potential for “alternative content.”

Comscore, which collects box office data, forecast Sunday that North American ticket sales for the year would be about $9 billion, up 20 percent from 2022. (Before the pandemic, North American theaters reliably sold about $ 11 billion in tickets.) The average price for an adult general admission ticket in the United States was $12.14, up from $11.75, according to research firm EntTelligence.

Global ticket sales are expected to exceed $33 billion, up 27 percent, partly due to a surge in Latin America. (Before the pandemic, global ticket sales easily exceeded $40 billion annually.)

Hollywood’s post-pandemic climb is expected to come to a halt in 2024. With fewer films scheduled – studio pipelines have been disrupted by the recent strikes – ticket sales will fall by 5 to 11 percent next year, depending on the market, according to Gower forecasts. Street Analytics, a box office research company.

Reading tea leaves in the cash register is like pontificating about symbolism in works of fiction: any remotely plausible theory works. But studio bosses need something, anything, to guide them in creating billion-dollar ratings for the coming seasons.

Here are five takeaways from this year:

Moviegoers want comfort.

People turn to nostalgia in times of stress, and films that reminded audiences of the past – while also managing to feel fresh – have been successful. With ‘Barbie’, ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Wonka,” and the retro-feeling “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” allowed people to relive their childhood. “Insidious: The Red Door” has taken the spotlight by bringing back the original stars of the franchise.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” could have tapped into nostalgia to become a hit. Instead, a huffing and puffing Harrison Ford, 81, simply reminded Indy fans that they, too, are getting old. “Dial of Destiny” cost Disney $295 million to make and grossed a measly $384 million. (Theatres keep about 50 percent of ticket sales.)

Art film has momentum.

Sophisticated dramas with modest budgets and aimed at an older audience are showing signs of life after two years in the ICU

The streaming age has moved most of the prestige movie viewing home forever, analysts say. But theaters saw a modicum of success in 2023 with offerings like “Past Lives,” a wistful drama with some Korean dialogue, and Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film “The Boy and the Heron.” The custom-made ‘Asteroid City’ managed to raise $54 million.

Early box office results were also promising for Oscar-oriented films like “Poor Things,” a surreal science fiction novel, and “American Fiction,” a satire about a writer who puts together a fake memoir that focuses on racial stereotypes.

Bigger is not better.

Over the past decade, Hollywood has kept audiences interested in sequels by making each installment more bloated and often nonsensical than the last. Taller! Faster! More!

That strategy may need to be reconsidered; it’s just too expensive, analysts say, especially now that Chinese moviegoers are mistaking American blockbusters. “Fast By comparison, “Furious 7” cost $190 million in 2015 and grossed $1.5 billion, including $391 million in China.

Tom Cruise’s seventh “Mission: Impossible” spectacular, released in July in the wake of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” cost about $290 million to make and raked in $568 million, including $49 million in China. The sixth ‘Mission: Impossible’ in 2018 cost $178 million and generated $792 million, with Chinese ticket buyers raking in $181 million.

Increasingly, franchise sequels and spinoffs need to feel fresh to succeed. For example, Lionsgate delved deeper into the underground crime organization High Table in “John Wick: Chapter 4” and introduced “Hunger Games” fans to a new storyline (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 story back in time.

“Each of these films did something different than the last,” said Adam Fogelson, vice chairman of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. “It wasn’t just ‘spend more, make it bigger, make it louder and take more action.’”

Some audience patterns remain intact.

Horror remained a reliable performer, with “Five Nights at Freddy’s” and “M3gan” starting new franchises for Universal and its Blumhouse affiliate. Together the two films cost $32 million. They collected a combined $469 million. Also notable was “The Nun II,” which Warner Bros. cost approximately $22 million and raised $366 million.

Superheroes may be disabled, but they are not disabled. Marvel’s bold, established “Guardians of the Galaxy” series returned for a third chapter, generating $846 million against a $250 million budget. Sony’s bold, anime-influenced “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” cost an estimated $150 million and raked in $691 million.

Stars are important.

The conventional wisdom in Hollywood is that movie stars are essentially a thing of the past. A celebrity name above the title no longer carries as much weight with ticket buyers. The underlying ‘intellectual property’ is what fills seats.

People pay to see Barbie, not Margot Robbie.

Except that Mattel and various studios spent at least two decades trying 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 it happen. Other films that benefited from the star power in 2023 included “Wonka,” starring Timothée Chalamet, and “Creed III,” starring Michael B. Jordan.

Stars have no weight? 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 weren’t allowed to promote their work because of the SAG. AFTRA strike.