Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 7/3/2023

2023 is now halfway done.  There is some good news and some bad news…

GOOD NEWS

  • Halfway through 2023 the domestic box office total is at $4.35 Billion which is 20.7% higher than this time a year ago thanks to the moderate hits in the winter and spring like “Cocaine Bear”, “Scream 6”, “Evil Dead Rise”, and ESPECIALLY the current #1 movie for 2023 “The Super Mario Bros Movie” (current #1 of 2023 both domestically – $573 million – and worldwide – $1.337 billion) plus some summer hits including “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3” (currently #2 domestic and worldwide) and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” (current #3 domestic but it’s only about $16 million dollars below the #2 domestic movie).
  • Unlike last year where July and August only had a couple high profile movies (Only “Thor Love and Thunder” and “Bullet Train”) this year there’s a bunch of high-profile upcoming movies like “Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1”, “Oppenheimer”, “The Barbie Movie”, “Haunted Mansion”, “Meg 2”, and “Grand Turismo”.

However….

BAD NEWS

  • According to current estimates, there’s NO MOVIE predicted to make over $100 million over the opening weekend.  The current release “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is probably going to make about $60 million over the weekend and maybe $80 million for the 5 day 4th of July weekend.  Upcoming predictions sayd that “Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1” MIGHT reach $100 million after 5 days (it opens on Wednesday July 12), “Barbie” could possibly reach $80 million on it’s opening weekend, and “Oppenheimer” could possibly reach over $60 million on it’s opening weekend.  The weekend that everyone will be wacthing is the July 21-23 weekend.  They’re saying that it could be over a $200 million weekend.  “Mission Impossible” could make about $40 million on it’s 2nd weekend, “Barbie” could possibly reach $100 million, and “Oppenheimer” could reach $60 million.  However, after that there will be a lull since there’s only “Haunted Mansion” two weeks later on July 28.  Plus, “Oppenheimer” is booked on ALL IMAX screens for at least 3 weeks.  Unless the movie does suprisingly well, after the 2nd weekend most of those IMAX screens will probably be wishing they could play “Hautned Mansion” because the theaters will be pretty empty.
  • The writers strike is still happening and there’s still a potential actors strike (the actors strike ended on Friday June 30th at midnight but they agreed to extend the current contract until July 12th).  So, that means that there’s a possibility of reshuffling movies at the end of the year.  If the strike(s) go on for awhile there might be a lot of unfinished movies that are currently scheduled for 2024 so there might be some shuffling.  Marvel has already changed around their movie release schedule for 2024.  There’s a possibility that some movies currently scheduled for the 4th quarter of this year could be moved to 2024 to make room for the movies not opening in 2024.
  • Another issue with the strike is that if the actors are on strike then there will be no promoting any movies (it’s a good thing that the actors strike was postponed so Tom Cruise, Margot Robbie, and other can continue to promote their movies for the next few days).  If the actors don’t promote the movies, that could hurt the box office for the movies in the fall like “The Equalizer 3”, “A Haunting in Venice”, and “Expendables 4”.
  • Last thing is that could be a problem is that it doesn’t look like there is anything scheduled for release at the end of this year that could match the huge box office performance of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in December 2021 and “Avatar: The Way of Water”.  Both of those movies eventually became the #1 movie of 2021 and 2022.  This year in Nov there’s “Dune Part 2” (although the first movie only made about $100 million total domestic).  Current Dec high profile releases are “Wonka”, “Aquaman 2”, and “The Color Purple” (musical).

So, it’s looking like there’s a chance that “The Super Mario Bros Movie” could STILL be the #1 movie of 2023 in another 6 months.