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In 2023, the rules didn’t apply to many of the year’s biggest success stories.
Over the past two decades, superheroes and sequels have dominated the box office. But last year, many of Tiffany’s film franchises had all the appeal of an Old Navy dump, with the likes of Indiana Jones and Ethan Hunt returning to action for more high-flying adventures, only to be met with gross receipts. who were decidedly connected to Earth. And cinema’s mightiest heroes, from Ant-Man to Aquaman, were told to hang up their socks and pitchforks as comic book movies suffered a historic collapse at the box office. Marvel, once seen as the film industry’s most indestructible brand, is asking tough questions about its creative direction, while DC Films has brought in new leadership in James Gunn and Peter Safran and tasked them with pulling off a total reboot.
The films that were successful emphasized the new over the familiar. “Oppenheimer,” a $100 million historical drama about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the creation of the atomic bomb, is the kind of pitch that, on paper, is an insane gamble. The fact that the film, backed by Universal and directed by Christopher Nolan, became an absolute box office success only punctuates this crazy, upside-down year at the box office. For the first time in over a decade, none of the three biggest films – Warner Bros. “Barbie” ($1.44 billion), the cartoons “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” from Universal and Illumination ($1.35 billion) and “Oppenheimer” ($951 million) — were either part of existing film franchises or inspired by comic books.
“Original content, rather than sequels, ruled in 2023,” says Richard Gelfond, CEO of Imax.
“Oppenheimer” proved that audiences will not only continue to be excited about new films, but will also be willing to cross state and national borders to see them on the best screen possible. Moviegoers boarded planes, trains and automobiles to watch “Oppenheimer” in Imax 70mm – available on just 30 screens worldwide – and experience the film the way Nolan intended it to be seen.
Of course, “Oppenheimer” is just half of the movie phenomenon that defined 2023 at the box office. O cultural craze of “Barbenheimer,” complete with double features of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” two seemingly different films with corresponding release dates, helped fuel not only the biggest collective weekend at the box office since the pandemic, but one of the biggest of all the time. For a shining moment, cinema once again became the dominant art form, with the two blockbusters monopolizing the cultural debate.
“’Oppenheimer’ and ‘Barbie’ couldn’t be more different, but in basic ways, they were similar because they were compelling stories told masterfully,” says Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners. (NATO). “You don’t want to make assumptions about your audience. It’s possible to overthink why people go to the movies. They just want a compelling story with great actors.”
Other original stories also rose to the top, catering to very specific audiences and relying on unorthodox promotional strategies. “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” became a can’t-miss event for teenage girls, who were encouraged to use their phones and sing and dance in the hallways in between “no talking and texting” edicts. Its global gross of US$250 million makes it the second biggest concert film of all time. Swift keeps most of the profits because she partnered with AMC Theaters to release the film theatrically rather than working with a traditional studio, which would have charged her a higher distribution fee.
Released at the height of summer, “Sound of Freedom,” a low-budget drama about a former government agent who rescues victims of child sex trafficking, managed to compete with the latest films “Mission: Impossible” and “Transformers.” Released by Utah-based Angel Studios, “Sound of Freedom” relied heavily on religious crowds, encouraging audiences to “pay it forward.” buy tickets for other people to see the film. It also used crowdfunding to finance the film’s distribution and marketing.
These films have bypassed traditional Hollywood companies, but some veteran studios have also taken new approaches to marketing their films. Universal, for example, turned the robotic doll at the center of “M3GAN” into a social media queen, promoting the film on TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, where the over-the-top villain’s dance moves launched a million memes . The film grossed $181 million globally on a budget of $12 million. “M3GAN” was one of several horror films to top the charts and make profits, joining a list that includes “Five Nights at Freddy’s”, “The Nun” and “Scream VI”. This illustrates the durability of this genre, even when other box office staples have faltered.
An industry that has come to rely on franchises to sell tickets has learned the hard way about a lot of good things. Big-budget tentpoles like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” and “The Flash” were primed to be the most successful films of the year, only to completely miss box office expectations . Part of the problem is that both the “Indiana Jones” and “Mission: Impossible” films had budgets of nearly $300 million, meaning they had to be huge hits, which they weren’t, to turn a profit. To be fair, the increase in costs was primarily the unforeseen consequence of a global pandemic that led to costly closures and safety protocols. However, they were also given the green light when China was a major market for Hollywood films. Global tensions and the growing popularity of local-language films in that region have led Chinese audiences move away from North American films, changing long-standing business models. Add to that the disappearance of Russia as the main source of ticket sales due to the war in Ukraine, and we have a shrinking international market. Privately, studio executives say there is a major effort underway to control movie budgets.
The muted foreign box office means there haven’t been many big films in 2023. Just two releases, “Barbie” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” surpassed the $1 billion mark, while nine surpassed that number in 2019, the last pre-COVID year.
“There were a lot of doubles and triples, but fewer home runs,” Gelfond says.
There weren’t that many at bat either. Hollywood studios are releasing fewer and fewer films — just 88 films will debut in theaters in 2023, compared to 108 in 2019. It’s a reminder of the lingering effects of COVID, which has created a series of production nightmares. The content crisis will not be alleviated anytime soon. This year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes prevented cameras from filming major blockbusters for months. This led to a tangle of schedule changes and complications, resulting in films like “Mission: Impossible 8” and “Captain America: Brave New World,” set to premiere in 2024. being pushed back for the following year. There’s also the possibility that the film industry could suffer more labor unrest if the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Workers, which represents below-the-line staff like editors, lighting technicians and makeup artists, decides to picket when their contract expires in July.
“When you lose half a year of production, 2024 will be a recession,” says O’Leary. “We have to be realistic. If any industry lost half a year of production, there would be an impact the following year. We would like to have maintained the 2023 pace, but it is temporary. We fully expect the momentum to continue into 2025.”
Greg Laemmle, CEO of the Los Angeles-based Laemmle Theaters circuit, says he is “cautiously optimistic” about 2024. Despite several high-profile openings, hits like “Dune: Part Two” and “My Despicable 4” drew crowds in a big way. “We will have to deal with the consequences of the strike,” he says. While business at his theaters has been steadily improving since the pandemic, he thinks Hollywood needs to stop banking on a handful of box office megahits in favor of a bigger, more complete slate.
“We need films [that gross in] the range of US$75 million to US$175 million. I would like to see adult comedies and dramas too,” he said. “A wider range of films will bring people to the cinema. ‘Air’ was a very good film aimed at the mid-range audience.”
“Air,” a sports drama designed to appeal to adults, was backed by Amazon, which was not concerned about profiting from the film during its theatrical run. The studio wanted to generate buzz around the film before it premiered on the company’s streaming service, Prime Video. Apple deployed a similar strategy with “Killers of the Flower Moon” and “Napoleon,” lavish historical dramas that were released on thousands of screens to raise its profile. Like Amazon, it wants to draw more attention to its Apple TV+ streaming service. These deep-pocketed tech and retail giants are aggressively entering the entertainment space and showing a willingness to support the types of auteur-directed films that big studios consider too risky.
In 2023, the plan backfired spectacularly, causing studios to reconsider their reliance on geriatric film properties and cinematic universes that kept introducing new superhero residents to diminishing returns. Perhaps the past 12 months will serve as one of those transitional moments in Hollywood history, a time when old paradigms shatter and a period of creative resurgence blossoms in their wreckage. That was certainly the case in the late 1960s, when epics and bloated musicals upended the studio system and ushered in a new era in cinema which was bold, courageous and motivated by the artist. It also happened in the 1990s, when a new generation of authors like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Steven Soderbergh emerged to give an independent recharge to a struggling film industry. Since “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” were hits, will more directors like Nolan and Greta Gerwig have the opportunity to realize their visions without endless studio interference?
Perhaps. But it is also equally likely that Hollywood will draw the wrong lessons from this shift in popular tastes. Instead, we may be looking at a future marked by an endless parade of toy adaptations and spinoffs, and a future in which video games are exploited as a source of intellectual property and “Oppenheimer” is seen as an anomaly, not a confirmation. that the public wants to see something original. The next few months will give a hint as to which way the film industry will decide to go.
