This weekend, I found myself checking the box office numbers for the weekend and noticing that the two top movies (Elemental and Spider-Verse) were holdovers, and that neither cracked 20 million. The big new release, No Hard Feelings, sputtered to the finish line with 15 million dollars.
We are in the middle of summer! Summer is when everyone’s supposed to go to the movies! And not a single film made 20 million bucks? What’s going on here??
When I fell in love with movies, box office was everything.
Because box office was the unequivocal deciding factor on whether a movie mattered or not.
Some of the most exciting moments for a movie geek like myself were when a film would come out of nowhere and do these amazing things at the box office that had never been done before.
For example, I remember how The Sixth Sense made 26 million dollars its opening weekend. And then it made 25 million its second weekend. That had NEVER happened. Not for a movie that had already gone wide. A 1% drop? It was unheard of. Three weeks later, it actually made MORE money that weekend than the previous one.
Then you had the opening weekend record-setters. The Phantom Menace opening to 65 million. Harry Potter opening to 90 million. Spider-Man opening to 115 million. Dead Man’s Chest opening to 135 million. The Dark Knight opening to 160 million!
There was excitement in the air whenever a big movie opened. Everyone talked about how much it could possibly make.
But these days, the numbers don’t seem to matter to people anymore. I don’t say that in a sad way. I’ve just noticed that people don’t talk about box office like they used to.
Consider Avatar 2. The film made 2.3 billion dollars at the box office. That’s the third most money a movie has ever made. Have you heard anyone touting that number? Have you heard anyone care about it? “Hey! Did you see Avatar 2 crossed 2 billion?!” Nobody’s said that to me. The trades felt like they had a gun to their head every time they reported about the film’s box office success.
So, what’s causing this change? Where is this apathy coming from?
The most obvious reason is the pandemic. Going to the movies was a habit people had. When you take that habit away for two years, it makes people evaluate whether that habit was valuable to them. Somewhere between 20-30% of the people who had that habit realized it wasn’t very valuable. And now they’re not going to movies anymore.
Rise of streamers – I’m not one of these people who think that being able to watch a movie or a new show at home is automatically better than being able to watch a movie at the theater. Because a big reason you go to the theater is to get out of the house. It’s cheap entertainment. And it’s fun to meet a friend or to go on a date and watch a movie together. With that said, streamers have given us SO MUCH MORE content that theatrical movies face more competition than they ever have before.
Also, streamers re-introduced a notion that had been absent from the industry for 40 years – no box office reporting. When a movie came out on streaming, you literally had no idea how many people had seen it. I remember when I Care A Lot came out. That movie got people talking. But we still had no idea, relatively speaking, how many people cared. Was it a 20 million dollar opening level of interest or a 50 million dollar opening level of interest? After we got 30+ streaming releases without that box office answer, we started to get used to the idea that box office didn’t matter all that much.
Next we have the politicization of movies. Mainstream films have more politicized themes than at any other time in history and it’s definitely hurting the box office. If there’s even a whiff of a movie promoting some political angle that conservatives or liberals don’t like, you’ve lost half your audience right there. It’s put moviegoers on edge and made them less trusting. Anything that gives people pause about going to the movies is going to eat into the box office. Which makes you wonder why they’re doing it.
The King of The Box Office has already happened – Avengers Endgame ruined everything. The movie made 350 million dollars its opening weekend. Nobody’s going to beat that. One of the things that audiences used to get excited about was, “Will this movie beat The Dark Knight?” Or, “Will this movie beat The Force Awakens?” Avengers Endgame is Wilt Chamberlin’s 100 point game. It ended the discussion. Which takes a lot of the fun out of the box office. If we’ve already hit our limit, it implies that we’re not growing anymore.
The younger generation doesn’t care – The GenZ’ers don’t get excited about this stuff. They’re more interested in how many views a tiktok video got. Or how many subs a content creator has. Box office isn’t on their list. Also, since this generation is growing up on streaming, their world of content is more immediate, and less about going out and seeing a film. Especially because if you go out and see a film, you risk getting triggered on the way there. I kid. But seriously, content on devices is more important to this generation than content on giant screens.
Finally, movies are no longer our zeitgeist moments – Back in the day, if a big movie came out and everyone was seeing it, you felt like you needed to see it too so you were in the know, so you were a part of the cool club. Movies aren’t like that anymore. The best example of this is the fact that we don’t have people quoting movies anymore. Everybody in the world knew the line “I’ll be back,” after The Terminator. Does anybody know one memorable line from last summer’s biggest movie, Top Gun? They’re more likely to know Paul Rudd’s line from his Hot Ones interview (“Look at us”).
This is because interest has been specialized. Instead of us all liking one big thing, our interest is divided into 20 smaller more specialized things. I love The Bear. But I just tried to have a conversation about it with my neighbor and they thought I was talking about a traveling circus. “No, it’s a show about a fast food restaurant in Chicago.” “I’m confused. When does the bear come in exactly?”
This used to be the reason why everyone would watch the same things. Cause they all interacted with each other and wanted common ground to talk about. But the internet and, more specifically, social media, changed that. If your neighbor or chem class partner didn’t watch The Bear, no problem. You can go online and talk to your pal, Choi, from Hong Kong, who loves The Bear so much he’s redecorated his place to look like the inside of Carmy’s apartment.
So what does it all mean? Is this a bad thing?
Sort of. Yeah.
In a way, the industry set themselves up for this. They’re the ones that celebrated the numbers. They’re the ones that touted from the rooftops that a Hollywood film had made 350 million dollars in a single weekend.
So now when Transformers Battle of the Armadillos makes 60 million dollars its opening weekend, you’ve conditioned the masses not to care about that. It’s literally one-sixth of what Avengers made. Why would I watch that film? Or Fast X at 67 million. Or No Time to Die at 55 million. Even when The Batman came out and made 134 million, I remember thinking, “Is that good for a Batman movie? Is it bad?” I didn’t know!
But the discussion is broader than that. Because I don’t think people care even when a movie does make a lot of money. The discussion is less about the money and more about the movie. When Top Gun became such a big hit, I didn’t hear anyone discuss how much money it was making. I heard people talking about how fun it was. How it was the perfect summer movie. But nobody was like, “Top Gun just passed 400 million!”
Which may be the silver lining here. Maybe now that we don’t have box office chains wrapped around our wrists and ankles, we can just appreciate that a movie is good. I’m fine with that. Box office has been a camouflage for bad movies for too long. Doing away with that unnecessary distraction allows us to see more clearly. I think I’m going to like a post box office Hollywood.
