The 2024 Summer Movie Box Office Is Burdened By Unreasonable Expectations

With the release of Zendaya's "Challengers" behind us, it's just about time to focus on the arrival of the 2024 summer movie season. That begins, in earnest, with the release of Universal's "The Fall Guy" this Friday. After a couple of particularly bad weekends at the box office that the industry can frankly ill afford, all eyes are now on summer to help turn the tide. Like it or not, the summer now has an undue amount of pressure on it as theaters look for films capable of filling seats so they can sell enough popcorn to keep the lights on. Unfortunately, the slate we have before us doesn't seem, on paper, like it can compete with what we had last year. As a result, we're doomed to be disappointed by what unfolds in the coming months.

"The Fall Guy," for example, features a pair of big stars in the form of Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt. The expectation is that the $125 million blockbuster will open in the $40 million range. If that does happen, against good word of mouth, it could leg out and become a decent hit, optimistically speaking. But when we look back at the first weekend of May last year, we had the monster that was "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," which opened to $118 million on its way to $359 million domestically and $845 million worldwide. There's just no way "The Fall Guy" will deliver on that same level.

More or less, that's the pattern we're looking at for the duration of this year's summer moviegoing season. On May 17, we have John Krasinski's family-friendly "If," Lionsgate's "The Strangers: Chapter 1," and the Amy Winehouse biopic "Back to Black" all opening wide. Last year on that same weekend, we had "Fast X" racing to a $320 million global start, including $67.5 million domestically. Can those three releases this year collectively do the same for the industry?

The once-in-a-lifetime success of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" last year casts a particularly big shadow. The Barbenheimer phenomenon added around $2.4 billion to the global box office last year. There is nothing on the calendar in 2024 that can deliver those same results. Will "Despicable Me 4" and "Deadpool & Wolverine" be big hits? Almost certainly, but not enough to save the industry on their own.

What's particularly frustrating is that many of this summer's movies may well be hits on their own terms. If "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" can do "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" ($481 million worldwide) numbers, Disney will probably be happy. But the industry at large kind of needs it to do "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" ($710 million) numbers. We can't rightfully expect "The Garfield Movie" to be a $1.3 billion hit like "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" was last year. It's unfair, but that's where we are.

From the decline of superhero movies over the last year and change to an overall sparse release calendar thanks in large part to last year's SAG and WGA strikes, the situation is not great, to put it lightly. As of this writing, 2024 ticket sales are pacing 21% behind this same point in 2023. The box office topped $9 billion in 2023, which was good, but that was still well behind pre-pandemic levels. Theater chains need a good year. Studios need to see the forest through the trees. Everyone needs a win, but summer 2024 isn't looking like it'll be able to shoulder the weight being placed on it.

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

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