An Unlikely Savior Has Emerged At The Box Office

It's no secret that the 2024 box office has been off to a slow start. Moreover, the theatrical side of the movie business as a whole has been trying to figure out what the long-term future looks like in the Covid era. The recovery from the 2020 shutdowns has been slower than expected and theaters are in need of wins, wherever they can be found. To that end, a somewhat unlikely savior has emerged: TV shows.

That may sound odd, but yes, products made for the small screen have increasingly been making their way to the big screen in recent years, and the results are encouraging. This year alone has seen the continued success of the faith-based TV show "The Chosen." With the help of Fathom Events, the crowd-funded series about the life of Jesus Christ has seen its entire fourth season brought to movie theaters multiple times in several-episode chunks. As of this writing, the show's fourth season has earned around $27 million and counting in theaters. The whole thing kicked off in early February when "The Chosen" season 4 premiere pulled in just shy of $6 million, which helped to prop up an otherwise terrible weekend at the box office. But that's just one admittedly niche example. There are others.

Also in recent weeks, "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — To the Hashira Training," which is just several episodes of the TV show fashioned into a feature, became the latest movie in the long-running anime franchise to put quite a few butts in seats at theaters around the country. The film has earned nearly $16 million domestically, including an impressive $11.5 million opening weekend. Yes, it fell off a cliff and dropped nearly 82% in its second weekend as "Dune: Part Two" arrived, but it hardly mattered. Its distributor, Crunchyroll, has made a solid business model out of finding an empty weekend, letting these anime releases find their audience, and collecting money fans seem happy to hand over.

"Demon Slayer" has been doing this since 2020 when "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — The Movie: Mugen Train" made nearly $50 million domestically when pretty much nothing was making any money at the box office. You want to talk about a savior? That was a meaningful amount of money when theaters needed it most. Similarly, stuff like "Christmas with The Chosen: The Messengers" ($13.3 million) helped fill in a gap in 2021. Mainstream Hollywood has provided less product to theaters in the pandemic era, and TV shows have helped fill the void on some level.

There is an argument to be made that more TV shows should be taking a chance on the big screen. It's not hard to imagine a "Star Wars" show like "The Mandalorian" pulling in an audience for the season's premieres and/or finales. Granted, Lucasfilm is now just straight-up making a "Mandalorian" movie, but that just further underlines the point here. Netflix could probably attract a lot of interest by releasing episodes of "Stranger Things" season 5 in theaters. The list goes on. Hardcore fans are willing to show up for these things. Perhaps most important of all: What do studios, streamers, or networks have to lose here, aside from a few extra bucks to the filmmakers for releasing a project across platforms?

This year's box office was down 20% compared to last year before "Dune 2" arrived. Theaters need help, and there is growing evidence that TV could be used to provide at least some of that help. From my vantage point, it's hard to see a reason not to explore this more in the near future.

I spoke more about this on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:

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