The Theatrical Recovery Is Over

Hollywood no longer has any excuse not to treat exhibition as fully recovered, financially essential and exactly as prosperous as the distributors will allow it to be.

Four years ago this weekend, the theatrical industry was being almost single-handedly kept alive by Comcast via a slew of primarily small-scale programmers (partially to test out its PVOD program) like Promising Young Woman, Let Him Go, Freaky and Come Play. The weekend’s top movie was Universal’s The Croods: A New Age, whose $14 million Wed-Sun debut made up 70% of the entire holiday weekend. 101 Studios’ The War with Grandpa would earn $840,000 for third place, while Gravitas Ventures’ Vanguard (the first wholly overseas Jackie Chan actioner to get a wide release since Drunken Master II in 2000) would earn $227,000 for a $681k ten-day total. Cut to November 2024, when domestic theaters just had the biggest Thanksgiving weekend ever on record (and the most tickets sold since 2012), with $427 million.

As of Memorial Day weekend, amid a paucity of biggies (save for a crowded March), 2024 was down 24% from 2023 and barely 5% above 2022. As of Thanksgiving weekend, it’s down just 7%— or about $600 million — below 2023’s year-to-date domestic cume. The massive upswing since Bad Boys 4 and Inside Out 2, which should continue through December with both a bigger slate of newbies (Sonic 3 and Mufasa > Wonka and Aquaman 2) and comparatively sky-high holdover grosses from Wicked 1, Gladiator 2 and Moana 2, gives the industry a fighting chance of reaching the $8.5 billion totals of 2023. And that’s with the first half of the year kneecapped by strike-related delays. Four years after The Croods: A New Age was hot by default, the theatrical recovery is over.