This has been a rough decade for movie theaters.
You already know all about 2020, and unless you saw “Birds of Prey: And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn” or the year’s box office champ “Bad Boys for Life” in theaters before the covid 19 pandemic hit in March, then you quite likely didn’t see a movie in the theaters at all that year.
As soon as vaccines started making their way into the arms of willing Americans, movie theaters began to slowly open back up, though it was a bumpy road at first.
But after the release of the Marvel blockbusters “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” (which earned $432 million worldwide) and especially “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (which earned a staggering $1.9 billion), theater chains like AMC ended the year on a high note, even if it was clear that a few big blockbusters weren’t going to be enough to help ease the overall problem, as it was starting to look like people were increasingly only interested in seeing large franchise films in theaters while waiting for everything else to come to streaming.
By contrast, 2022 has been, on the whole, looking up for AMC, though improvement on 2020 will likely be treated by the company as a victory.
The Robert Pattison-starring “The Batman” opened to a strong $134 million total, which was impressive if nonetheless down from the $155 million earned in 2008 by “The Dark Knight” and the $160 million taken in by “The Dark Knight Rises” in 2012. (Why this was the case is unclear, maybe people knew the film would be on HBO Max in 45 days, maybe people were scared of COVID.)
But the movie industry has long been built around the summer movie season, which started with the mostly well-received “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which earned $187 million in its opening weekend.
But now that May and June are in the books, how are theaters faring so far?
How Is The Summer Movie Season Going So Far?
The year 2019 wasn’t just the last “normal” year for theater chains, it was also (at least in terms of box office) the biggest year ever for theaters, with a record-settling total of $42.5 billion, built on the backs of international $2.79 billion earned by “Avengers: Endgame” and the $1 billion earned by “Toy Story 4.”
But if it isn’t completely fair to compare an industry that is still arguably in a recovery year to its greatest year ever, then it also wouldn’t be fair to compare a year that is only a touch more than halfway over to a twelve month period.
It is nonetheless still instructive to look at the Box Office Mojo totals for 2019 for the month of June (and the months that preceded it) and to compare how this year is going so far for theater chains. (For a variety of reasons, mostly due to censorship and China’s strict ban on LGBTQ+ content, the last seven Marvel films have not opened in China, so to get a more clear comparison point let’s stick to domestic totals.)
Here’s what the top five movies of the first half of 2019 had earned by the end of June, in America.
1: "Avengers: Endgame”: $858,373,000
2. “Toy Story 4”: $434,038,008
3. “Captain Marvel”: $426,829,839
4. “Aladdin”: $355,559,216
5. “Us”:175,084,580
Total: $2.24 billion
Here’s what the top five movies of the first half of 2022 have earned during the same time period, domestically. (While “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was released in late 2021, it continued to earn serious box office totals this year.)
“Spider-Man: No Way Home”: $804,793,477
“Top Gun: Maverick”: $597,406,000
“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: “$411,062,441”
“The Batman”: $369,345,583
“Jurassic World Dominion”: $341,915,830
Total: $2.52 billion
So far, 2022 is actually an improvement on 2019. But it’s still unclear if AMC is out of the woods just yet.
Paramount Pictures Studios
What Else Does Hollywood Have In Store For The Rest Of The Year?
The healthy box office totals this year are largely due to the success of the “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” both of which have passed the billion dollar mark internationally. (The success of “Top Gun,” and to lesser extent the pretty solid total for “Elvis” has been welcome news to people who complain that everything is a superhero film these days, though “Top Gun” is still a long delayed sequel.)
But if you look past those two, the rest of the 2022 shows a steep drop off, with “Sonic the Hedgehog” earning $190,872,904 and “Lightyear” seriously underperforming with just $109,422,200.
By comparison, 2019 had a much deeper bench of earners, including “John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum,” and “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World.”
What’s more, as noted by Variety, the summer may have already peaked, at least in terms of blockbusters, as Hollywood may have front-loaded this summer, as the rest of the season is dominated by films that might win over critics, but don’t have the built-in name recognition that’s often a requisite for blockbuster success, as relatively more small-scale (i.e., not Marvel) films like Jordan Peele’s “Nope” (July 22), Brad Pitt’s “Bullet Train” (Aug. 5) and Idris Elba’s “Beast” (Aug. 19) “look like a series of question marks… are there more box office surprises in store?”
Hollywood does have a few tricks left for the end of the year, including “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” on December 21st, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” on November 11 and “Avatar: The Way of Water” on December 16.
“Avatar” recently regained its crown as the most successful film of all time after a re-release to theaters, and if the sequel is anywhere near as successful, then 2022 might prove to be a banner year for AMC.
But if that’s not the case and the heavily hyped sequels fail to live up to the predecessors, well, AMC can still take comfort in the fact that it will still be a better year than 2019.
