The unavoidable glumness that seeps into almost every frame of Marvel’s grief-stricken tentpole sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was offset upon release by the warmth with which it was received. Critics might have been just a tad damper this time around (a solid 84% vs a sterling 96% for the original on Rotten Tomatoes) but global audiences turned out en masse, the film already edging toward the $700m mark after less than a month in cinemas.
It was rousing news for all within the industry after a precarious fall season that saw more misses than hits but its banner success still masks a far more worrying bigger picture. This Thanksgiving period might have seen Wakanda Forever top the box office with a healthy $64m over the five days but overall, it was the worst holiday showing since 1994 (pandemic years notwithstanding). In 2019, the total was $181m. This year it was just $95m.
Disney fantasy Strange World tanked with just $18.6m, a start so rocky that analysts are suggesting the film will lose over $100m for the studio (previous Thanksgivings have seen them open Coco to $72m and Frozen 2 to $130m). Sony’s airborne action drama Devotion sputtered out at just $9m, failing to capitalize on the summer success of Top Gun: Maverick (its budget is a reported $90m). And expansions of Luca Guadagnino’s Bones and All and Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans both struggled to make an impact, with $3.6m and $3.1m respectively.
Trade headlines about the concerning state of the box office have been brewing now for weeks. Universal’s prestige Weinstein investigation drama She Said, Billy Eichner’s landmark gay rom-com Bros, the acclaimed Cate Blanchett-led drama Tár, David O Russell’s starry caper Amsterdam, period whodunnit See How They Run, George Miller’s garish fantasy Three Thousand Years of Longing and even Dwayne Johnson’s DC outing Black Adam all underperformed on different levels.
“It’s been tough drawing audiences to the multiplex,” said Paul Dergarabedian, a senior analyst at Comscore. “I don’t think anyone can complain that there isn’t an incredible mix of movies out there but this marketplace has been so confounding in terms of trying to get a handle on it and crack the code as to why certain movies are doing well and why others aren’t.” He referred to this Thanksgiving as “an attention getter for an industry that’s still reeling from the impact of production delays and release calendar changes”.
A survey earlier this year found that 41% of consumers rarely go to see movies in the cinema anymore and 18% don’t go at all.
The success of Wakanda Forever and Top Gun: Maverick before it (making just under $1.5bn since this summer) invited the opposite coverage, excitable declarations that the “box office is back!” but perspective and a deeper read has shown that the industry remains in a difficult spot, one that’s both down to recent circumstance and one that’s also of its own making.
“There has been a systemic shift in how audiences want to view content today,” said Dallas Lawrence, senior vice president at Samba TV, a company that gathers audience analytics. “We were already on a trajectory to a future where all content would be streamed, and the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated this significant shift by several years.”
During the darkest days of the last almost three years, studios postponed releases, sold others to streamers and further pushed the premium video on demand option (PVOD), which allowed audiences to pay extra to rent films that would have otherwise unspooled at cinemas. As the world started to reopen there were enough signs along the way that, despite some predicting long-lasting gloom, audiences were eager to return to the multiplex, with hits such as Godzilla vs Kong, F9: The Fast Saga, A Quiet Place Part II and Spider-man: No Way Home. The latter in particular showing that even in December 2021, as…
Read More: Box office blues: why are so many films bombing this season? | Film industry