Box Office Breakdown Archives

The 2023 Box Office Breakdown

Posted on December 31, 2023December 31, 2023 by fenrisfil

When looking at the box office, in past years I’ve used a more accurate spreadsheet that takes into account the slight variation in percentage of ticket sales that goes to the studio for the opening week and global territories. This year however I’m just using the simple 3 X production budget formula. What that effectively does is assume the marketing costs are about 50% of the production budget again and that the ticket percentage is a flat 50%. The actual figure is far more complicated. I’ve split this years films into Epic Wins, Success, Met Expectations, Disappointments and outright bombs. Let’s start at the top!

Epic Wins of 2023!

This is a relatively short list. The biggest winner of the year is “Barbie“. A movie that most expected to do well, but literally no one expected to cross $1.4 billion. There’s a lot that could be said about the movie, it certainly isn’t perfect but it does seem to have truly resonated with fans of the franchise. Regardless of if they agreed with the treatment of the Ken’s, the real world or the crude humour, they also recognised that this really looked like Barbie’s world. Barbie wasn’t the only franchise though to give it’s fans something that felt right and the second biggest winner of the year is again way out in front of the rest of the gang this year and that is “The Super Mario Bros. Movie“. Another film most expected to do well. My particular prediction was it would do “Minions numbers”, but it blasted even past that to a whopping $1.36 billion globally. I feel there is a lesson to be learned here about, but I’ll get to that later.

After these two phenomenons things get a little more subjective. Here we need to look at which movies massively exceeded all expectations rather than the gross ticket sales. The first such hit is unsurprisingly Oppenheimer. In what was probably the strangest viral marketing tactic of any movie people were encouraged to go an see “Barbenheimer”, a double bill of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Bizarrely this was embraced by audiences and both movies saw a considerable boom in ticket sales. The two movies couldn’t possibly be more different, but it’s an important lesson in never underestimating the power of a good meme. Is it something we’ll ever see again? Well Barbie is almost certainly getting a sequel and Christopher Nolan isn’t going to stop making movies any time soon, so who knows?

Two more movies to land in the epic win category are “The Sound of Freedom” and “Godzilla Minus One“, both with low budgets and both massively over performing. On top of that the audience response was off the charts. The Sound of Freedom is an emotional thriller from Angel Studios made for $14.5m, originally meant to be distributed by Fox, but after the company was purchased by Disney the movie remained on the shelf until Angel Studios requested out of the deal and found alternative distribution. Disney screwed themselves out of a good bit of money on that one, but they are full of bad decisions these days. Godzilla Minus One meanwhile is a Japanese Godzilla film made for a mere $12m and looking every bit as good as a $200m Hollywood blockbuster. The film takes Godzilla right back to his roots and is widely considered the best Godzilla film since the 1954 original.

Success Stories of 2023

At the higher end of the production budget scale there isn’t a lot of success stories for 2023 (Outside those epic wins). It’s pretty much just the animated Spider-Verse film “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse“, largely coasting off the great reception the previous Spider-Verse received back in 2018 as well as the continuing strength of the Spider-Man brand. Fan reactions to this one were mixed, with a few of the character portrayals not quite landing with viewers and the ending feeling anti-climactic. Turns out this was only half of a story and the continuation is already delayed thanks to the writers strike. However, the animation continues to receive praise and the Spider-brand remains the one guaranteed cash cow in the Superhero genre.

The most successful horror movie of the year was the video game adaptation “Five Nights at Freddy’s“. With a $20m production budget, perhaps on the higher side for horror the move raked in $300m globally, The thing to note here is that was with a day and date streaming release. That means no one actually had to go to the theatres to watch this legally but they chose to anyway. That is a huge success and honestly could have pushed this one to the epic win column. The movie itself was very true to the game and absolutely nailed the look of the animatronic monsters. That said it wasn’t without flaws, most notably how light the horror elements actually were. As a result the reaction to the movie was decidedly mixed, but the important thing was fans of the game loved it.

Not too far off the success of FNAF was an early release in 2023 the horror film “M3GAN“. A personal favourite of mine from the year, the film drew in $181m worldwide against a production budget of only $12m, making around $145m. That’s a considerable amount of profit and you can bank on this film seeing a lot of sequels in the coming years. The latest entry in the Saw franchise “Saw X” made itself a healthy profit with $109m against it’s $13m production budget. That’s a $147m profit and you can bet Saw XI won’t be too far off. Surprisingly, the sequel no one asked for “The Nun 2” managed to earn itself $268m against it’s $38.5m budget, netting $152m in profit.

“Talk To Me” had a production budget of just $4.5m and raked in $70m, with many calling it the horror film on the year. The latest Insidious sequel meanwhile, “Insidious: The Red Door“, had a $16m production budget and raked in $186m globally. Despite it’s financial success though, The Red Door was not well received and it remains to be seen how much life this franchise has left. Last but not least The Evil Dead series had it’s second reboot with “Evil Dead Rises” drawing in $146m against it’s $19m budget. That’s a profit of about $89m. though it’s worth noting when the production budget is under $30m the P&A cost (Mostly marketing) is likely more than 50% of the production budget so these films possibly made a bit less than I am listing, but they still did well.

Business As Usual – Meeting Expectations

I’m not going to cover too many lower budget movies here as it’s quite hard to judge what expectations are for a lot of those. Many of those films will be of more value on streaming after their theatrical run or are more about studio prestige than actual profits. But there are still a few films to talk about. First up, the most successful live action superhero film of the year “Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3“. This was the final part of the James Gunn’s Guardians story and his final Marvel movie before heading over to DC and Warner. With that in mind, expectations for this film were high and because of that it could be debated this is actually a disappointment.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3 is the fourth highest earner at the box office with a worldwide haul of $845m. The problem is the production budget of $250m pushes the break even point to about $750m, meaning the movie likely didn’t even bring home $100m of profit. On top of that it brought in less (Inflation adjusted) than the previous GOTG movie and represents a creative dead end for the MCU. That said, outside of the depiction of Adam Warlock the film was well received and made for a strong send off to the team and James Gunn.

Also rounding off a well love movie series was “John Wick: Chapter 4” and in doing so achieving about what would have been expected. The movie drew in $430m against a production budget of $100m. Despite the lower numbers it likely ended with a greater profit than GOTG3 and kept in line approximately with the previous movies. The reception from audiences were positive, despite a few noting how over the top it has all become now and how John Wick is basically a superhero at this point. The choreography and camerawork in the action scenes though was pretty spectacular. While the movie ended John’s story, it opened up the world in which is was set to any number of spin offs, so the franchise is still alive and strong.

Doing about what was expected in the box office was “Creed III“, the now Stallone-less Rocky spin off franchise pulled in a franchise best box office of $275m, but against a production budget of $75m (Also a franchise high), giving it profit of only around $50m. Fan reaction for this one was down on the previous two movies and it is doubtful we’ll see as many of these films as we did from Rocky. Still, no one will be too upset with this performance. Last on this list is “Scream VI” pulling in $168m against a $35m budget and with mixed reception from fans, it’s not lighting the world on fire but for the sixth entry in a horror franchise that should probably not have had sequels at all it’s not a bad showing.

The Disappointments of 2023

Obviously flops and bombs are also disappointments but we’ll deal with those separately. First film on the list is the latest out, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes“. This is a movie that seems to have landed precisely at it’s break even point of $300m against it’s $100m production budget. No one will be celebrating that, but at least it hasn’t lost money. The tepid box office about reflects the audience and critical responses for the movie. If ever there was a movie that could be described as “Mid” it is this one.

Next up we have “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem“, a movie that sort of farted onto the cinema coasting off general franchise popularity and then heading into the sunset with a haul of $180m against it’s surprisingly high $70m production budget. The theoretical break even point for that is around $210m meaning this probably made a loss of a round $30m. It’s close enough to the break even point that it may have cleared it’s costs, but it could also be a lot more. That ambiguity is why it is in the disappointment section instead of outright flops, but it’s safe to say no one will be happy with this. Seth Rogen continues to be franchise poison.

Next up on the disappoint list is a director for who the word “Disappointment” has become somewhat synonymous with his career. Shyamalan M Night is a capable director that occasionally just makes very bad decisions. His movies tend to revolve around twists and that is always going to leave a lot of viewers disappointed if that twist just doesn’t resonate with them. The movie in question here is “Knock at the Cabin“, Drawing in about $54m global against it’s $20m production budget. Again technically under it’s break even point, but close enough that only the studio and their accountants likely know if it is in the black or in the red.

The last movie on this list to avoid being full on flops or bombs is somewhat debatable and that is Pixar’s “Elemental“. Going just on it’s theatrical performance of $486m against a $200m production budget it would be in definite flop territory. However, it has done very well on streaming and perhaps enough to remain out of Bob Iger’s nightmares this year. After all he has a lot more to be concerned about. The movie is pretty generic pixar stuff, but there’s been far worse animated movies out this year. No one is going to celebrate this one, but it could definitely be worse.

A few movies came out this year and flopped but avoided going “Full bomb”. First is Neil Blomkamp’s “Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story“, pulling in $117m against it’s $60m production budget and losing about $60m. This will certainly not help Blomkamp, which is a shame because he is a very talented director that should be the one making those big franchise movies. “A Haunting in Venice“, the third Kenneth Branagh Poirot movie had a $60m production budget, but drew in only $114m, losing about $66m. These last two I’m told are good movies, but am yet to see them. Last on the list is Trolls Band Together” drawing $139m against it’s $95m budget and losing about $45m.

In the genre of Horror an interesting one is “The Exorcist: Believer“, which technically did okay $136m against it’s $30m production budget. But Blumhouse paid out $400m for the rights to the franchise, meaning that they likely expected more from the film. If future movies do about the same, scraping out under $50m in profit, the franchise won’t actually have made any money until it’s ninth installment (Which would technically be Exorcist 10,12 or 13 depending how you count it). That definitely isn’t what they had in mind when they purchased it.

BOMBS AWAY!

This is where most of the big budget movies of 2023 ended up, so since I’d like people to actually read this article I’m not going to be verbose on this one and just plow through it. First up “is “. Next on the bomb list. “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves“, a movie I found disappointing but one not without support, it drew in $207m against it’s $150m production budget, losing around $200m for Paramount. Second on this list is Disney’s controversial live action remake of “The Little Mermaid“, which generated $568m globally. An impressive haul, except that with a production budget of $250m it’s break even was a whopping $750m, meaning the movie actually lost $182m for Disney.

Big franchises were no guarantee of success in 2023. “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” drew in $438m globally against it’s $195m production budget, losing around $147m for Paramount. It’s worth noting on this one, domestically the last three Transformers movies have made about the same, but the international numbers have been plummeting movie after movie, going from $555m to $391m to just $280m. Also Bumblebee had a more modest $118m production budget putting it’s break even point at $354m, had Rise of the Beasts been as careful with it’s spending it would have made $84m instead of turning into a bomb. However, there is no denying internationally Transformers may have run it’s course.

One of the years more surprising failures is “Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning part one“, a movie that drew in a whopping $566m globally, yet still ending up losing $300m due to it’s insane $290m. The lesson there should be obvious, but I would add that I don’t feel audiences are too keep on going to see what they perceive as half a movie either. In practice the movie did have a conclusion but seeing “Part One” in the title probably put some people off. The movie also had unexpected competition from surprise “The Sound of Freedom”. Joining in the insane budget club is “Fast X” with an astronomical budget of $340m, meaning it needed to make over a billion to break even. It made $714m, loosing $306m.

Disney attempted to turn an amusement park ride into a successful movie franchise again this year with Haunted Mansion. The movie cost $158m, had a break even of $474m and generated just $115m. That’s a whopping $359m. If that is embarrassing it’s not as embarrassing as their centenary celebration movie “Wish”, whose nonsensical plot managed to pull in only $146m against it’s $200m (that they admitted to) budget. That means the movie lost Disney $454m, probably not how they planned to celebrate. It’s worth noting last year I was optimistic about Wish since it was supposed to be a return to classic hand drawn animation. However, that plan was abandoned and they reverted to rather poor looking CGI instead. The plot apparently was changed too and I Can’t imagine for the better.

But as bad as all that looks….Well, then their is “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny“. Another movie with a $300m production budget (bang on $300m supposedly, which likely means it was a lot higher but that’s all they’ll admit to). Indie 4 drew in a mere $381m worldwide losing Disney $519m. That is half a billion lost digging up a long dead franchise that already had two send decent send offs (I’m talking just of the end of “Crystal Skull” there, not the entire movie). It could be argued most of the damage was done with Crystal Skull or that the trust in Lucasfilm after it’s horrendous mismanagement of Star Wars is so low it didn’t matter what they put out, it was doomed from the start. Then again word of mouth wasn’t good either. Technically this was the biggest box office bomb of all time, at least for a few months….

Superhero movies were, with a couple of exceptions, box office poison this year and with Marvel and DC dominating the genre that means Disney and Warner Bros took a big hit. Disney’s “Ant Man & The Wasp: Quantumania” only brought in $463m globally against it’s $200m production budget, losing $187m for the company. But if that sounds bad, it was a huge success compared to some of the other movies in the genre this year. DC’s “Blue Beetle” could only manage a minuscule $128m against it’s fortunately more sensible budget of $120m. That means a loss of $232m for Warner on that one. The Shazam Sequel “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” is in a similar situation earning $132m globally against it’s $125m budget, losing Warner $243m. It’s worth noting had Quantumania cost $120/125m, it would would have broken even. Warner’s due meanwhile would have had to be produced for $40m to break even, but then let’s remember Godzilla Minus One cost $12m, so these things are possible.

So, as bad as those losses were they are nothing compared to the this years true super villains, “The Flash“, Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom” and “The Marvels“. It’s worth noting the Aquaman sequel is still out in theatres, though after the first full week and the first few days of the second we can make a pretty reasonable prediction. Least disastrous of the bunch is theoretically “The Flash”, but a lot depends on if you believe the official production budget of $200m. This film had a *lot* of reshoots. But even going by the official it’s break even would have been $600m and it only managed a paltry $266m. That means at best The Flash lost Warner $334m. Between this bomb and his personal issues it’s fairly safe to say Ezra Miller’s career may be over.

Speaking of people with no Hollywood career anymore, Amber Heard’s controversial legal feud with Johnny Depp may well have cost Aquaman II a good portion of it’s box office, but in a year where every DC movie has bombed it’s unlikely to be just that. The first Aquaman movie reached the billion mark, this one has barely scrapped $145m and going by it’s current legs will probably finish somewhere around $188m. The movies official budget was $205m and again this movie had a lot of reshoots. At one time Michael Keaton’s Batman was in it, at another Ben Afflecks, but the final released version contains neither. Going by their numbers it needed $615m to break even and will likely end with a loss of around $334m (Yes, the same as The Flash). Add it all up and Warner’s DC brand has cost them $1.14 billion this year. Ouch!

Remember when I said Indiana Jones was the biggest box office bomb of all time… for a few months. Well, that was until “The Marvels” came out. The movie probably winning the award for dumbest name of the year (Marvels The Marvels? Really?) and demonstrating that perhaps requiring the global audience to need to watch a load of Disney+ TV shows to have an entry point on a movie is not the best plan. It also suggests that perhaps Marvels D and E list characters just aren’t popular enough to lead a movie, at least not without the hype of an impending “End Game”. I’m not exaggerating about the character tiers either, Captain Marvel was always D-List and Kamala Khan is E list at best (Though Iman Vellani could have raised her up in better circumstances).

The movie’s official production budget was $275m making it’s break even a whopping $825m. How much did it make? $199m global. That’s a crippling $626m loss. That’s over $100m than Indiana Jones loses. I’m reminded of that time Kathleen Kennedy posted a “Passing of the Lightsaber” to Kevin Feige for breaking the $2b point with Infinity War (After The Force Awakens had previously hit that mark). How times have changed. Now if they were to pass that lightsaber around it would probably be to commit harakiri… except these days being stabbed through the guts with a lightsaber is something you can walk off, so maybe not.

Since I charted Warner’s superhero loses, it’s only fair I do that for Marvel too. Thanks to the small gains of GOTG3 that figure is around $715m in loses. While that may make Marvel seem healthier than DC, at least Warner is able to do a full reboot. Plus Disney have to add those other loses from Lucasfilm and their animation wing into that pile and those sting. The final tally is a loss of $2.4 billion for Disney’s movies. So yeah, Warner got off light.

Conclusion

Appearances can be deceptive, when you look at a list of films with the highest box office for this year you will probably see a few of these disasters and perhaps be mislead into thinking they are successful, but the level of production budgets and marketing costs these days means those big Hollywood movies need to make an incredible amount of money just to break even. Meanwhile most horror films, dramas and independent movies need to make very little to be a success. Hollywood tends to favour the bigger budget movies though because when they are profitable they tend to be incredibly profitable. But it is always somewhat of a gamble. This year most of those gambles ended in disaster.

Indeed it’s probably safe to say this is the worst year in history for the box office. The problems though are pretty clear. First of all, there is no denying that superhero fatigue is a thing now. People may debate on if it’s just over-saturation or too many low quality movies, but the truth is both of those are symptoms of a genre trend reaching the end of it’s road. Superhero movies won’t disappear, just as westerns never disappeared or horror movies after the 80’s boom. Quite often the best movies in a genre come out after it hit’s decline (For example both “Unforgiven” and “Tombstone” came out long after the western was supposed to be dead).

Not that superhero movies were the only clangers this year. Disney movies were almost entirely bombs this year, with only GOTG3 bringing in some bacon for them. It’s notable James Gunn’s swansong at Marvel was probably Disney’s most universally accessible movie that year, the rest of their output tended to be on the divisive side and when your budgets are at $200m and higher you really can’t afford to turn any potential fans away. Elemental was probably their next most accessible movie and that ended up the most likely to claw back into profitability via streaming and physical media sales. There is a definite pattern there. It’s not to say you can’t make heavily progressive leaning movies, but you need to budget them appropriately. When you are talking about huge franchises, it would be seriously stupid to turn off half the audience.

But accessibility goes for the global audience too. It’s not just about left and right leaning English speakers, it’s about global cultures. If you have stories and themes that resonate with people no matter where they live or what their politics are, then that $1 billion + box office will be in reach. If your film only really appeals to the population of California, then you need to realize that it’s probably capping off around the $200m mark. That means you need a budget of around $60m or less if you hope to make a profit. It’s as simple as that. Even aside from being divisive a number of films this year have shown that you can make spectacular looking movies for much less than Hollywood has been spending. Outside of a James Cameron Avatar movie, I don’t see why any film should cost more than $120m for it’s production budget. If CGI is so expensive, stop relying in it!

On the positive side though, for me at least, there is a clear indication that Horror is a sensible way to go right now. The “Success” section of this article was almost entirely horror movies because you can make them cheaply and the audience is fiercely loyal, both for horror in general and for specific franchises. Personally I don’t feel we need an eleventh Saw movie or a Seventh Scream, but chances are the fans would turn out for them. The first Evil Dead movie came out in 1981 and yet the second reboot in a row is 42 years later is still able to make a solid buck. The Exorcist is a trickier one, but had they not spent so much for the rights that would be considered a success. Considering the film had terrible word of mouth and fell off a cliff in it’s second week, it did surprisingly solidly. Certainly “The Nun 2” had no business being a success and yet it made more profit than “Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3”. Right now, horror films are the only safe bet that a studio can rely on and studios love a safe bet.

When I look at this years epic wins though one thing becomes really clear. The top end of the movie market isn’t really driven by the studios or the mainstream movie media anymore. They are driven by the fans and social media. Mario Brothers and Five Nights at Freddy’s cashed in on a very dedicated gamer fan base. Barbie and Openheimer meanwhile, while likely to be successful in their own right, made huge gains due to a simple meme. It’s worth noting too that Mario, Barbie and FNAF all gained praise from the most dedicated fans of those non-movie franchises. It seems once again giving the core fanbase what they want pays off. Sound of Freedom and Godzilla Minus One were never expected to be hits (At least not in the US), but word of mouth can have a huge impact. In this instance it seems the secret is just make something worth watching!

Anyway that’s all for now… Thankfully! A year like this gives me far too much to have to fit into one of these. It remains to be seen if Hollywood (And more specifically Disney) will learn anything from this. In previous decades Kevin Feige and Kathleen Kennedy would be out of a job for taking the mantle of worst bomb of all time, but we don’t live in those times anymore and some producers seem untouchable. That’s not a good situation for Hollywood, but as we’ve seen if they aren’t willing to give people the entertainment they want, they will find it elsewhere. Not necessarily in movies either, we’ve had a good 100+ years of cinema, it would be foolish to think future generations would be as passionate about these films as you or I. Happy New Year!

2021 Year in Review – Part 2 : The Big Breakdown

Posted on December 30, 2021December 30, 2021 by fenrisfil

2021 has been an erratic year in the theatres with a number of movies bombing hard, delayed releases having too much ground to make up to break even and a few movies completely bucking the trend and making us all wonder if the box office failures were due to Covid at all. After all movies have bombed in the past, maybe there were marketing failures, maybe the trailers were bad, maybe there just wasn’t any demand for what was being put out, maybe the movies were just not very good! Let’s take a look!

Dramatic Failure.

It seems one of the biggest hit movie genres of the year is the Drama. These movies tend to have lower budgets (hovering around the 20-30 million dollars), but this year they have struggled to draw much at the box office. Many of these movies have been sent simultaneously to streaming, others attempted stay exclusive to theatres. Neither approach really turned out a winner. For example Clint Eastwood’s Neo-Western Drama “Cry Macho” released to streaming and in theatres and only pulled in $14.7m in global gross against it’s $33m production budget. That already looks bad but when you take into account P&A (Prints and Advertising) costs and the fact that they only get a portion of that gross the movie ends up as quite a bomb, at least on paper.

Another release, the long anticipated Soprano’s prequel “The Many Saints of Newark” went simultaneously to HBO Max and theatres and clawed in a mere $12.7m global gross against it’s hefty $50m budget. It seems the movie wasn’t as anticipated as perhaps the studios thought. Reaction to the movie has been mixed too between Soprano fans, but this hasn’t stopped rumour of a spin off series set between this movie and the original show.

Theatrical Exclusivity.

It is hard to determine how much of that is offset by benefit of the movie being on streaming. What we can do is make a comparison to other drama movies that did not hit streaming simultaneously. For example Ben Affleck’s crime drama “Stillwater” was exclusive to theatres and drew in $17.3m against it’s $20m budget. On the surface that looks better, but it is still a bomb and one with no benefit to streaming partners. Similarly, historical drama “Spencer” also had an exclusive theatrical release and that drew only $12.2m global gross against its $18m budget making for yet another flop.

Things didn’t go so well for Ridley Scott this year either with two movies released exclusively to theatres. His second, “House of Gucci” actually did well drawing in $111.5m but with a production budget of $75m it is still currently sitting at a loss. Scott’s first movie of the year however “The Last Duel” only brought in $30m worldwide on a whopping $100m production budget making it one of the bigger bombs of the year. That one I largely blame on poor marketing, but it is also worth noting that putting a blockbuster size budget on what was effectively a modern day version of experimental Japanese movie “Rashomon” (1950) was probably not that wise in the first place. Not that most people even knew this is what the movie was going in thanks to that marketing.

The Horror! The Horror!

One of the genres that seems perfectly suited to 2021 is the Horror movie, after all when the audience is afraid just going to the cinema, the horror movies job is done before the projector even starts. Which may explain why so many mediocre to bad horrors managed to make themselves some cash at the box office this year. Even the dreadful “Candyman” remake managed to claw itself into marginal profit. Not all horrors made a killing this year though.

One notable exception is “Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City”. This new reboot to the Resident Evil franchise attempted to tell the story of the first two games in compressed forms but hasn’t impressed most fans with comments complaining about changes to the characters and CGI that is little better than the graphics of those original games. The movie achieved a mere $31m global gross against it’s $25m budget. Those numbers seem pretty close but when you factor in P&A, the movie likely needed to reach $60m to draw even, leaving this another of 2021’s bombs.

Another of this years box office failures in the horror field is Edgar Wrights “Last Night in Soho”, which was one of my personal disappointments of this years cinema. The movie landed $23m worldwide gross against $43m budget marking it down as a real clanger. It’s worth noting that while “The Last Duel” was effectively (and confusingly) marketed as “Me Too – The Movie”, that would have been a fairer assessment of this movie. Both films failed, so perhaps cinemagoers are just tired of these kinds of themes in their movies. Like Racoon City though this was not a traditional horror film. So how well have they faired?

Fear Markets Itself.

The big winner of the horror box office this year was “The Quiet Place: Part II”, sequel to the breakout hit of 2018. After the success of the low budget original the sequel was guaranteed a larger budget and ended up around the $55m mark. The movie was also likely to have a lower box office than it’s predecessor, further reducing the profit. However, despite that the movie drew in $296.7m globally meaning this movie is well in profit and unsurprisingly a third movie has already been announced.

Also well into profit is the long awaited third part of the Conjuring Franchise. Many fans, including myself wondered if they would ever get back to the main series after making so many spin offs, but they did and the result was… mediocre. However the box office was not, landing $200m globally against it’s modest $39m budget. Another very healthy profit and it seems even though the Conjuring shared universe has more misses than hits as far as quality is concerned, as a franchise it is as strong as ever.

The last big winner was also one of the most disappointing movies of the year and that is “Halloween: Kills”. Where the movie did not disappoint was it’s box office scoring $130m against a $40m production budget. With a heavy sway towards domestic over international that has allowed for around about $40-50m in net profit. That is pretty healthy but it should be noted it is significantly short of the heavily hyped franchises return in 2018 which landed about double. Perhaps that is due to covid, perhaps it is because the previous instalment proved divisive amongst the fanbase or it could be because word of mouth on this one was frankly dreadful. Still, with about $70m net profit I doubt the producers are crying themselves to sleep. Halloween Ends is out next year and we will see if they can stick the landing on this trilogy.

But what about the Blockbusters?

Ultimately outside of “The Last Duel” none of the movies we’ve mentioned so far were that big of a gamble. Even the flops may yet justify their existence through streaming, physical media release and studio prestige. The Blockbusters however are a different matter. These movies often cost over $300m (including P&A) and can have break even points well above $500m. The most extreme example of this in 2021 being “No Time to Die” which had a reported break even point of $900m. It’s impossible to say if it was truly that high, but with multiple aborted releases wasting advertising money, the need to reshoot due to outdated product placement and the interest charges on the funds borrowed to make the movie those costs just kept going up, until we reached the point where the movie was looking like it may actually bankrupt Eon Productions.

That didn’t happen though because by a minor miracle the movie managed to score 770.9m global box office. Turns out despite the long delay, people still really like James Bond (Which makes the movies ending somewhat unfortunate). Perhaps unsurprisingly, $128m of that box office was from the UK. It’s worth noting though that if the report was true, the movie is still losing $130m. That’s bad, but Eon Productions lives to fight another day. Distribution company MGM however did end up selling to Amazon. We will have to see how this impacts Bond in the future. Word is though that Eon and Amazon are already at loggerheads.

A Woman Scorned.

For many blockbusters this year the story wasn’t about disaster but just underperformance and the various excuses for that disappointing box office. Many of these films found their way on to streaming alongside their theatrical release and much like with the drama’s it is difficult to judge just how much of an impact this had on the box office.

Black Widow was out early in the year and brought in $375m. For a lot of movies that would be a win, but for a $200m Marvel Cinematic Universe movie that was only two movies removed from the two billion box office of “Avengers: End Game”. It’s also worth noting that this is another movie that had aborted release dates rapidly raising the break even point. Measured on theatrical performances alone this movie is a bomb, losing Disney about $100-150m. However Disney claim the movie also made $125m on Disney+ through it’s premium access (meaning subscribers had to pay an additional fee to watch). That drags the movie to around it’s break even point, most likely still making a loss. We may never know the real story, but what we do know is that Scarlett Johansen was unhappy enough to sue Disney over the result. The case was settled out of court and ScarJo is down to work with Disney again for their movie adaptation of their “Tower of Terror” ride (Yes, that is a thing that is happening), so it seems there were no hard feelings.

The Grey Area.

Also released early in the year Ryan Reynolds vehicle “Free Guy”, was predicted to be a bomb but actually proved to have incredibly strong legs through word of mouth and just about managed to draw even. Bringing in $323.6m global against $100-125m budget. The movie was sent to streaming 45 days after it’s theatrical release, which proved to be a winning tactic (and something Warner Brothers are implementing for all movies next year). As an early release the movie was likely more impacted by Covid and it seems the IP’s new owners at Disney (The movie started production prior to the Fox deal) are very happy with it. Expect a sequel.

Another big budget question mark this year is “Godzilla Vs Kong”, which released simultaneously to streaming and managed to bring in $467.7m in worldwide gross. The budget is estimated at between $155m and $200m which means the movie likely made money, but it’s worth noting if that budget is at the maximum of that range then it probably has a small loss instead. However I’d still call this a win considering it was also on streaming and came in ahead of three MCU movies (Two of which were theatrical exclusives). Meanwhile Disney’s villain turned anti-hero movie “Cruella” landed a $228.6m box office against it’s $100m production budget. Not a bomb, but definitely a disappointment for Disney.

The Triumph Of Mediocracy.

Perhaps the most hotly debated win or loss of the year was “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” which clocked up 417.9m globally against it’s $150m-$200m budget. That left it’s end result somewhere from a $5m loss to a $70m profit and without the excuse of being on streaming simultaneously. On the domestic side it landed in between “Ant Man and the Wasp” and “Doctor Strange” with not much in it (Though Shang Chi opened in more theatres than either), but globally it fell quite a way short of either of those landing even below the original “Ant Man” movie’s draw of $518.9m. Reaction to the movie has at least been mostly positive from the public, the media proclaimed it as a triumph and Disney have already greenlit a sequel, but it is clear that Shang-Chi is not going to be a major draw for the MCU moving forward.

Speaking of worse, it is time to mention “The Eternals”. Undoubtedly the most ill advised movie the MCU has put out so far. Taking a team of drama writers with no genre experience, pairing them with an indie movie director obsessed with scenery and giving them $200m to turn a virtually unknown Jack Kirby creation into a blockbuster superhero movie may have seemed like a good idea in a boardroom at one point, probably only if a large quantity of white powder was involved or possibly some LSD. To make matters worse they marketed the movie by simultaneously calling it a “Love letter to Kirby” while also celebrating the many, many changes they made to the characters and general look of the film. Kirby was of course an artist, so taking his work and totally changing the look of it is more like hate mail than a love letter. Of course most MCU fans don’t even know who Jack Kirby was, so this isn’t the reason for the movies failure.

Epic Fail!

It’s worth noting that “Eternals” was put into production just after Warner/DC announced “The New Gods”, which was basically the better known DC version of the same thing. This led to many to speculate that the movie only existed as a counter to the moves by DC. It is perhaps amusing to note then that Warner eventually scrapped “The New Gods”. The Eternals ended up with just under $400m domestic against it’s huge $200m budget and hefty marketing costs and is looking to be the MCU’s first confirmed bomb. There is still a possibility of it drawing even but with fans and critics both turning their nose up at this one it seems unlikely and we’ll probably not see much more of this team in the future.

This was far from Disney’s worst performing movie of the year though. Competing for that title are the theme park ride turned movie “Jungle Cruise” and animated feature “Encanto”. The latter drew in $194.3m against a $120m-150m production budget and looks to lose the studio from $50m-100m. Jungle Cruise though wins the prize as the Dwayne Johnson vehicle crawled to a $210.4m global against it’s $200m budget and looking set to lose the studio a whopping $150m. You would be forgiven for thinking that was the biggest bomb of the year, but from the looks of things, that prize is instead going to go to the Matrix 4, a sequel no one asked for by a director/writer that it seems didn’t want to make it (At least going by the self referential lines in the movie). That is currently sitting at a $66m box office against it’s $175m production budget and looks like it may lose the studio around $200m. Of course the movie may have legs and surprise people but as it is available on streaming and generally considered a terrible movie that seems unlikely.

Actual Triumph!

By this point you may be starting to wonder if the age of the blockbuster is over and if studios can rake in the kind of profits that they have in the past. Well wonder no more because here comes Sony with what may be their most successful year in decades, even in the face of pandemic. It’s worth noting that Sony do not have a streaming service and so did not send any of their movies simultaneously to streaming. First up for Sony was Venom sequel “Venom: Let There Be Carnage”, which not only did well in a period where people were making constant excuses for underperformance but actually matched the domestic take of the previous non-pandemic era movie in the franchise. Racking up $501m against it’s $110m production budget it is looking set to make a net profit of around $200m for Sony. The movie itself was entertaining but not spectacular, but clearly Venom is still a popular character and frankly anything that is a part of the Spider-Brand is a safe bet these days.

A closer run thing for Sony was their attempt to repair the Ghostbusters franchise from the damaged done by the disastrous “Ghostbusters; Answer the Call” film of 2016. Keeping things simple, returning to it’s roots and offering up very well done fan service turned out to be a winning formula but fans would need a lot of convincing to give the movie a chance. Sadly every franchise movie is deeply impacted by the one before it, which mean this movie was always really going to be about fixing things than profit, so a win here is basically not losing money and getting a positive reception and the movie achieved both. Bringing in $177.5m may not sound that great but with $121.2m of that domestic and a production budget of only $75m that is enough to push the movie in to the black and make around $18m in profit. Whether the next movie in the franchise can draw serious money now that the fans are happy again remains to be seen, but overall I’d mark this down as a win.

The Other Half Of The Story

A similar win comes in the form of “Dune”, a movie that was always a big question mark. While Frank Herbert’s epic series of novels are well known to hardcore science fiction fans, to the general audience it probably seemed like a drier, less exciting rip off of Star Wars (Ironically the Star Wars was heavily inspired by Dune, but most theatre goers don’t know this). To make things more challenging the movie is only part of the story of the first book and the studio were not willing to commit to filming part two simultaneously, which meant they had to convince the audience to go and watch half a movie, without an guarantee to ever complete the story. On top of this, the movie was pushed out to streaming simultaneously with the theatrical release. Odds were against the movie and many people, including myself felt the production was doomed. It doesn’t help that director Denis Villeneuve is pretty divisive as a director with as many people hating his previous movie, “Blade Runner 2049” as loving it and that movie failing to draw even at the box office.

However despite all that, positive word of mouth and some solid trailers stirred up the audience and the movie ended up bringing in a respectable $394.6m globally against it’s $165m production budget. That pushed the movie over the finishing line and fortunately it has now been greenlit for the second part. It’s hard to say at this stage whether the franchise will expand as much as was originally intended (With multiple movies and TV shows pencilled in) but at the very least we should see the completion of the first novel and I will be eagerly looking forward to it’s 2023 release date.

Another success story of the year was “F9: The Fast Saga”, despite being openly mocked for how ridiculous the movie was it did draw in a very strong box office of $721.3m and though most of that was international (meaning a smaller cut for the studio) it still generated a healthy profit against the movies $200m-$225m budget. The overall negative reaction though may leave the next movie in a difficult situation. Not that there are really any more sharks for this franchise to jump, but maybe they’ll introduce time travel and have the team race dinosaurs or something.

And the Winner Is…

While Sony did well with Venom and Ghostbusters this year, we can’t really talk about the company without mentioning the complete obliteration of the box office this year that happened at the hands of our friendly neighbourhood web crawler. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” delivered on all it promised and more and absolutely smashed the box office with a run that may yet see it hit the $2 billion mark or at least fall not too short of it. Currently sitting at $1.2b globally after only two weeks and with many global markets still to open the sky is the limit for Peter Parker and Sony. Disney get a big chunk of this profit too thanks to their deal with Sony (and more importantly for them they get 100% of the merchandise sales), but both companies have no doubt noted that this movie has outperformed the previous three MCU movies combined box office and done it just as the new Covid variant is tearing through the world. Indeed some global markets are completely shut down right now and yet this movie is making “End Game” numbers.

While financially that is great for Sony and Disney it must leave Marvel questioning just why the rest of this years output performed so weakly by comparison. The truth to that is most likely just that Black Widow was too little too late, finally giving a movie to one of the original Avengers after that character has been killed on screen. That Shang-Chi, despite the film itself is a D List character that people that don’t read the comics likely never heard of before and the Eternals are obscure characters even for those that do regularly read comics and simply had the wrong people writing and directing it. With characters that obscure you really need someone like James Gunn that can bring out the personalities and make the relatable. It’s pretty clear moving forward that Marvel needs to get some big guns out to make up for the loss of so many of the original team. That means getting The Fantastic Four out and figuring out what to do with the X-Men. They also need to cling on to Spidey like their lives depend on it! Sony meanwhile are laughing all the way to the bank.