Life After ‘Deadpool’: Summer Movies Resurrection Begs Rethink of Long-Term Box Office Outlook

It will be interesting to see how industry sentiment toward the movie business turns now that August has arrived.

There wasn’t any noticeable adjustment in the first weekend of the month, as the afterglow from last week’s triumphant launch of “Deadpool & Wolverine” barely dimmed, obscuring relatively muted debuts from M. Night Shyamalan’s “Trap” and animated kids title “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” 

But let’s see if concerns mount if there are any more disappointing starts in August on the heels of two months of consistently stellar domestic box office returns for a range of top franchises, culminating in massive turnouts for Disney’s “Deadpool 3” and “Inside Out 2,” not to mention some encouraging results in some even tougher genres.

Pardon Hollywood if that two-month streak had its film faithful issuing a big sigh of relief, considering the five months preceding June were pretty discouraging. The paucity of strong performers at multiplexes got some downright panicky when the prime summer movie season got off to a wobbly start with soft bows from “The Fall Guy” and “Furiosa.”

But what’s worse is the cold snap fueled a pessimistic narrative that had already gathered plenty of steam long before the pandemic and the strikes came along: The theatrical movie experience is in a state of irreversible decline and the pace of that decline is quickening. The number of people going to theaters, and the number of movies seen by those who are still going, is dwindling. Consumers prefer the screens on their phones, where among plenty of other distractions they can access streaming services offering plenty of first-rate, first-run movie options.

But none of that stopped a flurry of franchises from scoring in June and July. Sure, the return of “Despicable Me” was a guaranteed winner, but were “Bad Boys,” “Twisters,” “Planet of the Apes” AND “A Quiet Place” too? In retrospect, any one of these movies could have underperformed; none of them did.

What’s more, we saw minor hits over the summer outside the blockbuster lane, including Neon’s successful launch of the horror flick “Longlegs” and even the emergence of a few unexpected indie success stories, such as “Thelma.”

Unfortunately, this show of force likely still won’t be enough to match last year’s domestic box office levels. As VIP+ calculated last week, the plethora of summer hits has barely moved the needle on the total-revenue figure.

Chalk it up to the fact that no matter how well some titles are faring, the strikes have pinched the volume of product pumping through the pipeline. Cinemark CEO Sean Gamble estimated on an earnings call last week that there were 10 fewer titles in wide release this year. “Deadpool” being alone in the lucrative superhero genre also didn't help.

As Comscore data indicates, 2024’s volume of wide releases playing in at least 2,000 theaters took seven months to match half of 2023’s total volume. And with summer almost over, the fall months are unlikely to make up for the summer months failing to match last year, despite recent successes like “Deadpool” et al.

But even if the box office summer surge isn’t enough to salvage the year-end gross, it should be enough to prompt a reassessment of the overall health of the theatrical business relative to the anxiety it provoked most of this year and the longer-term pessimism that was in place long before 2024. 

There are two ways of looking at the last two months, which can be categorized thusly: 

The Bearish Scenario: While it’s great that so many movies did as well as they did over June and July, it would be foolish to extrapolate their performance to any future results. This was simply the cream of the studio crop rising to the occasion in the corridor of the calendar that audiences are primed for heavy moviegoing.

The Bull Scenario: This is not just a summer flash in the pan but a preview of what we can expect to see in 2025: a box office that will be completely rejuvenated year-round by a schedule that will have gotten past the strike hurdles and fully restocked with the kind of high-quality inventory we saw in June and July. 

Do not underestimate what happens when a 2025 slate packed with a broader array of tentpoles throughout the year increases circulation of audiences in theaters just by dint of swapping out the tiles on the marquee more often than in the year before.

Of course, not even an endless supply of fresh film would help if moviegoing habits have fundamentally changed for the worse. Doomsayers aren’t ultimately wrong about the movie industry, either, but this summer may drive them to revise their timetables, or at least be prepared to reshape what was once the smooth arc in the downward slope of their revenue projections. 

But panic-driven industry obituaries that were being written earlier this year are feeling a tad premature.