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!
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