US movie ticket sales took a hit in 2024.
The annual domestic box office is expected to end up at around $US8.75 billion ($A14.09 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 $US11 billion.
This is the year the business felt the effects of the Hollywood strikes of 2023, the labour 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 Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “Just a couple of months ago it was a question of whether we would even hit $US8 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 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 northern summer 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.”
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.
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 $US2 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.
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. 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.
What does work is a diverse lineup, with the Thanksgiving and Christmas successes being the perfect example. At Thanksgiving, there was Wicked, Gladiator II and Moana 2. Christmas had Mufasa, Sonic 3, and a lot of adult offerings too, including Nosferatu, A Complete Unknown and Babygirl.
Rereleases of movies in cinemas 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.
Everyone is optimistic for the film business in 2025, and the offerings for moviegoers - which include at least 110 films projected to open on over 2000 screens - according to the National Association of Theatre Owners.
“There's been a huge amount of box office generated in the last six weeks of the year,” Dergarabedian said. “This is the best opening act 2025 could have.”
