Scott Mendelson's Ridiculously Long 2024 Summer Movie Box Office Preview

Can movie theaters survive, or even thrive, without a 'Barbie' or 'Top Gun: Maverick'-sized overperformer bailing out the box office bombs and skewing the curve?

I’ve discussed this here and there on the podcast, as well as in a few Puck News columns, but the core dilemma is pretty simple: Most of the movies set for summer 2024 (The Fall Guy on May 3 through Kraven The Hunter over Labor Day weekend) are not going to perform all that well. I see only a handful of surefire $100 million-plus domestic earners, most of which are in June and July and none in August. And even if every major film on the slate is a relative hit, as-expected commercial success for this slate of mostly B-level franchise titles and commercial coin tosses won’t add up to anywhere near the $4 billion domestic total earned last summer and may struggle to hit the $3.33 billion earned in summer 2022. 

What happens if the summer films mostly perform as expected, with only a few *somewhat* overperforming? The answer could be grim. To do a deep dive, I rounded up the major big-deal releases for this upcoming season, month by month, and then glanced at optimistic and pessimistic scenarios for what each big-deal 2024 summer release might earn globally. So… are theaters in trouble or just on the knife’s edge of peril without a likely Barbie or Top Gun: Maverick to tilt the results?

First, a quick recap of summer 2022 and summer 2023.