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2023 Box Office Preview: Is It Time for the Pandemic Grading Curve to End?
by JEREMY FUSTER | January 6, 2023 @ 5:20 PM
With more films set for release than in 2022, ”the gloves have to come off,“ Paramount Domestic Distribution president Chris Aronson tells TheWrap
If you are a movie theater operator looking for some good news about the 2023 box office, here’s a statistic that will bring you hope. If you are someone who bemoans Hollywood’s lack of originality, turn away:
There are currently 38 franchise films — sequels, prequels, spinoffs, IP adaptations combined — that are currently set for release this year. This comes after a 2022 where there were only 18 films that grossed over $100 million at the domestic box office, and none of the top 10 were from original screenplays.
Even before COVID-19 was on the minds of an entire planet, big, familiar blockbusters reigned supreme at the box office, but in 2022 they seemed to rule at the expense of almost any other kind of film. The fact that more of those kinds of films are on the 2023 slate is a reason why multiple analysts and studio execs tell TheWrap that they expect the year’s annual domestic total to reach $8.25-9 billion, up from the estimated $7.36 billion seen last year.
While that’s an improvement, that is of course short of the $11 billion-plus totals that were seen between 2015 and 2019, and it’s completely possible that such levels of business for movie theaters might not ever come back, as turnout for awards contenders, festival darlings, and even some mainstream genres like comedy and middlebrow dramas have dried up since cinemas reopened.
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In 2021 and the early months of 2022, those low numbers were judged on a curve, as the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continued to weigh down moviegoing and studios were very unsure about which kinds of films would work theatrically. But this year, with audiences showing via “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Top Gun: Maverick” that they can come back in droves like before, there won’t be any pandemic curves to soften the blow if a film flops in 2023.
“The gloves have to come off,” said Chris Aronson, President of Domestic Distribution at Paramount. “We can’t judge the box office on the pandemic curve forever. We saw last year that people will come back for the right movies, so as more films get added to the slate, we need to seriously look at what the audience sees nowadays as a film they want to buy a ticket for; and both studios and theaters need to start looking at ways to attract audiences back to the films that they don’t seem to think are worth seeing on the big screen.”
Those hard appraisals that Aronson mentioned begin now, as the year begins with a post-holiday period that ended up being a two-month slump last year. Thi
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