After two years in which the rise of streaming services contributed to a record decline in audiences going to movie theaters, Hollywood seems to be coming back. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Thor: Love andThunder are both grosses that flirt with $1 billion, as evidenced by the opening weekends of both films. Top Gun: Maverick has become Paramount's biggest hit since Titanic.
In August, a lack of product will threaten the recovery of the theatrical experience and the viability of Hollywood. Warner Bros. has pushed back the Stephen King adaptation Salem's Lot and MGM has decided to release the film on Prime Video. While both films are not guaranteed blockbusters, their absence is all the more pronounced with what is left on the theatrical calendar for August, September, and even October: cheap horror films, and re-releases of past hits likeAvatar, Jaw.
This wasn't the way it had to be. The situation is made worse by streamer-owned studios opting to feed their content instead of supporting the exhibition business that keeps the Hollywood eco-systems going. Time is running out for studios to fix an easy problem with the last of the summer blockbusters set to debut.
The movie industry was crippled by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Unable to release their movies, Hollywood kept delaying their big releases (Paramount with Top Gun, MGM with No Time to Die) or diverted their product to their new streaming services WB decided to release their movies in a few theaters that were open and premiere them on their service at the same time. Disney didn't bother to do that with their Pixar movies, forgoing theatrical altogether for their three films.
If there was a bit of a scattershot, it would have been better. Most months have just one or two significant releases due to the waves of variant and lagging vaccine and booster shot rates. Sometimes, this strategy worked and sometimes it didn't, and sometimes it wasn't a good idea. Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Encanto, Sing 2, and Spider-Man: No Way Home were some of the biggest hits of the holiday season.
It was Spidey who brought in a wide variety of people and made a movie theater instead of a streaming service. It helped that Sony didn't have an in-house streaming service to send it to, which allowed the movie to play well into 2022, becoming the third highest grossing movie of all time. Hollywood was on its way to pre-pandemic levels of business thanks to a solid spring of hits, and that was thanks to the fact that movie theaters were open.
The good times continued into the summer with the official start of a movie. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness made $950 million in its opening weekend, making it the highest grossing movie of all time. It's not bad for a film about trauma and ennui. The terrible reviews of the previous tentpole, Fallen Kingdom, nearly matched that of the new one. It was almost unthinkable a year ago that the company was at $800 million.
There is a sequel to a movie that was released 36 years ago. The film was delayed two years due to star Tom Cruise's insistence that the theatrical experience is, er, paramount, debut above expectations and keep on drawing in audiences of all ages. Without key markets like China or Russia, it is the highest grossing movie of all time.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a spring release, but it keeps going and going at the box office, and you have a good season of movies to choose from. It looks like the near future will be bright, with the recent launch of THOR: LOVE AND THUD exceeding all previous THOR movies, and Jordan Peele's sci-fi horror movie being a huge hit.
The theatrical release calendar looks like a graveyard after Bullet Train. There are no blockbusters slated for theatrical release during the month of August and October. There was one recently. The movie, based on one of Stephen King's earliest and best novels, had the potential to be this year's IT, with the same studio handling the production and marketing and the concept easy to understand. September is a great month for big-budget horror and contemplative drama.
We have a slate of movies that will not keep up with the excitement of earlier in the year. It's all you need to understand the problem. In August, there will be a comedy starring Diane Keaton, an action movie, an IMAX-only re-release of E.T., a horror movie, and a mystical fantasy. It makes you wish for eternals.
September and early October are not as good as they could be. No Way Home is being re-released by Sony to get it over the $2 billion mark, while 20th Century Studios is releasing a low-budget horror film called Barbarian. The Woman King is a historical action movie with Viola Davis and a re-release of the movie to drum up excitement for the sequel.
Most of these movies are great. Barbarian, Don't Worry Darling, and Bros have the potential to be a hit if they can deliver on their promises. The problem is that the movies don't command a large audience to see them in the theatre. It's vital that Hollywood has a constant schedule of releases that demand to be seen in the movie theater with streaming services and other sources of entertainment.
An audience will get used to waiting until these releases hit their respective streaming services or something else if they don't. The Pixar movies were supposed to be on Disney+ the day they were released. When the company finally broke that pattern with Lightyear, they were met with disappointing box office numbers, one of the few underperformers of the year for an intellectual property.
The entertainment industry didn't do a lot to solve the problem. If they had acted earlier, we could have seen a more diverse and stronger release schedule that would have given audiences of all types a reason to go to the movies. In the wake of its drop in subscriber numbers, and a steep drop in the stock market, it would have made sense for the streaming service to release a film starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans in August.
The last decade has seen critically-spurned but commercially successful action films such as the original Suicide Squad, The Meg, and The Hitman's Bodyguard. The Gray Man, directed by the Russo Brothers and starring Ana de Armas, is a good example of a similar film. The box office gross could be used to shore up any losses the company may have experienced this spring. Is it out of the question for them to go into movie theaters with their original movies if they embrace an ad-supported version of their service?
It's not likely that this can happen with the film being released on July 15. In August, there are more original movies that would play well in theaters. Day Shift and Me Time are both comedies that could draw older and younger audiences in the same way. The point is not that these films don't look great, but that they are. They will feed the beast and keep movie theaters going, instead of being stuck with a product that is unattractive to a mass audience.
Studios can play a part in bolstering the schedule and keeping theatrical alive. Julia Roberts and George Clooney are going up against each other in a movie called Ticket to Paradise. It would make sense to move Paradise to September to give it room to breathe and have proper legs. When the calendar isn't as packed as it used to be, there's no need to counter program.
See How They Run was moved to a limited theatrical release on September 16. Why go for a limited run when there are no real competitors? Murder on the Orient Express was the highest grossing film of all time with a gross of $350 million. A wide release would allow the film to attract the older crowd, who are just now returning to see movies at the multiplex, and can possess the same box office endurance that Maverick is showing during the summer.
It is important for Hollywood to maintain regular patterns of behavior when the audience is changing so much. If they did it to Pixar, they could do it to anyone.
With Wall Street cooling on streaming services and endless content, movie theaters are more important than ever. It took over a year of careful planning and scheduling, but Hollywood now has people going back to theaters to see all types of movies. They shouldn't blow it because they're still chasing a stock price that can't be met and they're unwilling to try out new strategies.
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