What is happening to summer blockbusters?

Are movie theaters dying?

It’s a question that has been bounced around film circles for some time now, even before the pandemic saw theaters closed around the world, productions delayed and a rapid shift to how films are released on streaming services. With recent summer blockbusters like The Flash, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts underperforming, the question once again has risen to the surface.

The answer I’ve come to is...kind of. There are a number of factors at play here but the box office numbers, the most basic of data points to draw from certainly seems to suggest something at play. Only one film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, has grossed more than $1 billion worldwide so far this year. Compare that to nine such films in 2019. Over $11 billion dollars was grossed at the box office worldwide in 2019. 2022 saw a total just over $7 billion.

But these numbers on their own only tell part of the story. With projects often taking years to complete, the film industry is still recovering from the aforementioned pandemic. Yes, 2022 saw nearly 4 billion fewer dollars spent at movie theaters, but there were only 496 releases, compared to 910 films in 2019. If you look at the average gross of a release, 2023 actually has the highest average since 2003 (inflation and ticket prices obviously have an effect here, but it’s still a significant point to note).

So what’s going on here? The films I mentioned at the opening would have been surefire successes not too long ago. From what I can tell, people are still going to theaters, they just are being more picky about what films they are going spend their hard earned cash on.

There seem to be a couple reasons for this. One, while concurrent streaming of films still in theaters has largely returned to being an exception to the rule rather than the norm, release schedules for films, especially those that did not do well at the box office, on streaming platforms after their run in theaters still remains short, with some films showing up just a few weeks after. Another factor is rising ticket prices, which has risen over two-and-a-half dollars over the last decade, now sitting over $10.50. Finally, general audience sentiment seems to be slightly pushing back against the continuous big-budget sequels or weaker products of well-known studios that may have gotten by just by the name alone in the past. All of this evidence points to a shift in what movie-goers are looking for in their theater experience, in that they are looking for just that, an experience. An event. A landmark. Films like Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse are all sequel big blockbusters released in the last two years that have succeeded at the box office, but largely because the quality of the films made them must-see features. If a film cannot prove that it is worthy of spending the time and money necessary to drive to theater and experience it on the big screen, audiences seem content to just wait a month to stream at home. People still want to see movies in theaters; they just want to see good movies. And I can’t say I blame them.

A C ertain Point of V iew