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THE BIGGEST STORIES OF THE YEAR AT THE BOX OFFICE
Barbenheimer
The success of Barbie and Oppenheimer coming out over the same weekend—both igniting enthusiasm, not just around movies, but around going to the movies…it didn’t use to be weird to have two wildly disparate movies come out over the same weekend. I think we saw a lot more counter-programming this year…we’re back to getting more options at the multiplex. This year’s big win is for counterprogramming, having a variety of movies across different genres and budget levels.
– Rebecca Pahle
It’s not just counterprogramming; people were really into seeing those two specific movies together because of their ironic pairing. That tells me people still like going to the movies and are excited to go to something that feels like an event—and Barbenheimer felt like an event. It was an event that was created organically, not something the studios colluded to create. It happened because people wanted it to happen, which is incredibly rare—and specifically rare in the current environment.
– Russ Fischer
My biggest takeaway from the Barbenheimer phenomenon wasn’t about the two individual films themselves. It was that the focus of the whole affair centered around moviegoing…There was a worldwide buy-in to the concept from people wanting to participate in this. Everyone in this industry wants to repeat it, but you can’t box something this up. It’s not formulaic. It’s going to be hard to find a moment like this again. It was lightning in a bottle.
– Daniel Loria
The Decline of the Superhero & The Rise of the Video Game Movie
Superhero movies have gone from as close to a guarantee as you could have at the box office to something with a high floor but a low ceiling—and when we get the DCEU movies, those proved not even to have a high floor anymore. As these superhero movies struggle more than they used to at the box office, video game movies—which famously used to be a big challenge for studios to develop successfully—seem to be getting much more traction. We saw Paramount’s two Sonic movies bring in a new audience, and Universal’s Super Mario Bros. will finish 2023 as the number two film of the year.
– Daniel Loria
After decades of people trying to make video game movies work, we’re finally starting to see them live up to their box office potential. Sony has Uncharted, Paramount has Sonic, and Universal made a statement this year with both Super Mario Bros. and Five Nights at Freddy’s. The secret sauce here seems to be that we needed an audience of Zoomers who grew up with these games and have nostalgia for them. People who grew up playing the games waited years to see these characters in a movie. Five Nights at Freddy’s opened to $85 million in North America, despite opening day-and-date on Peacock for subscribers. That’s not something anyone could have predicted.
– Rebecca Pahle
You can’t discount the Zoomer audience, especially when you look at Five Nights at Freddy’s. That’s a massive part of that film’s success. I think a big component of this video game movie renaissance is simply getting it right: making a movie that looks like the game you are basing it on. It goes back to Sonic, when Paramount released a trailer that the fans hated. They went back and reworked how the character looked on screen! I’m very resistant to the idea that fans know best regarding these properties; I don’t believe that’s true. But when it comes to video game movies, you need to make them in a way that they’re not just recognizable to audiences but make them in a way that relies on their participation in the development of those stories. Games are participatory in a way that other media is not. There’s a different connection to video game characters, a different involvement with those experiences. Five Nights at Freddy’s shows that you can change around the story, and the fans will probably still be on your side as long as the movie retains the look and feel of the game.
– Russ Fischer
THE BIGGEST BOX OFFICE HIT OF THE YEAR
Barbie (Warner Bros.)
As soon as we got to Warner Bros.’ CinemaCon presentation and saw Andrew Cripps and Jeff Goldstein walk out in bright hot pink suits and saw the footage reveal with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling on stage, that’s when Rebecca and I turned to each other in the press section of the Colosseum at Ceasars Palace and realize this is going to be the movie we’re going to be talking about for the rest of the year. We came into this year without a clear pick for a film that could hit $500 million domestically; Barbie stepped up and grossed over $635 million in North America alone.
– Daniel Loria
BEST THEATRICAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR
Barbie (Warner Bros.)
I realized how big this movie could be when I saw the line of people waiting to take pictures with those life-sized Barbie lightboxes at CinemaCon. I remember seeing that and imagining how moviegoers would react to them at their local theater.
– Rebecca Pahle
It almost felt like a throwback to the 90s: a summer release with a hit soundtrack and toy tie-ins that felt like a global cultural event you could only experience at the movies. I hadn’t seen something like that in decades.
– Daniel Loria
BEST THEATRICAL MARKETING CAMPAIGN OF THE YEAR
Honorable Mention: Sound of Freedom (Angel Studios)
We need to single out the grassroots marketing campaign for something like Sound of Freedom, a title none of us expected to hit the way it did and ended up cracking the top 10 domestically. This movie came out of nowhere, released over a crowded July 4 weekend, and broke out through word of mouth and the support of independent theater owners. Hometown exhibitors were crucial to this film’s success. It’s an essential lesson to the rest of the industry: instead of alienating independent cinema owners and making their lives impossible, if you reach out and work with them—give them everything they need to make your film a success—they will work as hard as they can to make sure the film succeeds.
– Daniel Loria
BIGGEST BOX OFFICE SURPRISE OF THE YEAR
Sound of Freedom (Angel Studios)
We first heard about Sound of Freedom at CinemaCon, when they played the trailer at one of the luncheons and made the risky decision to begin rolling it out over the Fourth of July weekend. From the get-go, [Angel Studios] showed a willingness to work hand-in-hand with cinemas in the release of this film—and we can see the impact that had at the box office.
– Rebecca Pahle
BIGGEST BOX OFFICE SURPRISE OF THE YEAR
Honorable Mention: Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (AMC Distribution)
It sounds weird that a Taylor Swift concert movie would be considered a surprise at the box office, but this movie was nowhere near the schedule at the start of the year. This movie ended up on the schedule after Hollywood’s two labor strikes derailed the momentum we had built over the summer, filling a void left by films that left the schedule, like Sony’s Kraven the Hunter, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and Warner Bros.’ Dune Part II. That is when AMC came in with a groundbreaking new partnership with Taylor Swift herself to put this movie out in theaters…This happened because exhibition made it happen and put in the effort to make it happen after those hard lessons from the pandemic. When you cannot rely on studios to put out movies, you need to find a way to rely on yourself to make moviegoing a destination.
–Daniel Loria
THEATRICAL DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR
Universal
Universal kicked off the year with a sleeper hit like M3gan and kept finding ways to overperform throughout the year with new properties like Fight Night at Freddy’s. They did a tremendous job with their half of the Barbenheimer phenomenon. A movie like Oppenheimer is a much tougher marketing lift than Barbie, which comes with a built-in marketing hook.
– Rebecca Pahle
The fact that a movie like Oppenheimer can gross $326 million domestically is something that we have to highlight. You just don’t see that in today’s industry: a dialogue-driven three-hour-long drama set in the 1940s, essentially a movie about a group of guys in lab coats talking about science in the desert. This movie made nearly a billion dollars worldwide thanks to Universal’s support.
– Daniel Loria
The partnership with Illumination has to be one of the best business deals that Universal has ever made, Super Mario Bros. was a huge hit. They also did very well by Christopher Nolan…it’s bold that they went forward with that movie and gave it an extensive summer marketing campaign. It is not something many other studios would have done, even for a filmmaker with the recognizance factor of Christopher Nolan. The movie benefited from it, and so did everyone else around its release.
– Russ Fischer
THEATRICAL DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR
Honorable Mention: Angel Studios
This was the year Angel Studios entered the mainstream, they are now a real presence at the multiplex…We are giving this accolade based on the strength of Sound of Freedom at the box office, along with its innovative release model in counterprogramming the title over the July 4 weekend with a pay-it-forward campaign…but that doesn’t mean we expect all their future releases to hit that high water mark. What I like about Angel Studios is that they’re not distracted by producing crossover hits with each film; it’s about activating and engaging the sizeable audience base their films already have. That has always been the failed promise of faith-based films at the box office, their inability to reach their intended audience—regardless of their crossover potential. We may look back at Sound of Freedom as an outlier, but I don’t think Angel Studios is trying to replicate that crossover success with all their releases. As long as they can consistently appeal to their audience base, Angel Studios will continue playing an essential role for movie theaters nationwide.
– Daniel Loria
BIGGEST BOX OFFICE DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR
The Marvels (Disney)
I know there are all sorts of caveats and asterisks we can bring in whenever we talk about a box office disappointment of this scale, but we cannot possibly see the performance of The Marvels as anything other than disastrous…to go from Captain Marvel being a $1.1 billion movie to The Marvels grossing $200 million worldwide, that’s an alarm that goes beyond the issues we’re experiencing with superhero movies at the box office. Disney isn’t immune to this trend; we’re seeing signs of it with Warner Bros.’ lame-duck DCEU, and I have some concerns about how this may play out with Sony’s upcoming Spider-Man-Without-Spider Man superhero movies in 2024.
– Daniel Loria
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