A year ago, Hollywood’s creative community was celebrating the apparent decline of corporate, paint-by-numbers sequels and remakes. Blockbuster ticket sales for movies like “Oppenheimer,” “Sound of Freedom” and “Barbie” had shown — or so it seemed — that audiences were finally hungry for fresh stories.
You could almost hear the relief emanating from franchise-fatigued writers, directors and producers. “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the wildly inventive Oscar-winning art film that broke out in cinemas in 2022, had not been a fluke!
Alas. Mass moviegoing swung squarely back to the predictable this past year, with sequels filling nine of the top 10 slots at the North American box office. The ennead consisted of “Inside Out 2,” “Despicable Me 4,” “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Moana 2,” “Dune: Part Two,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” “Kung Fu Panda 4,” “Twisters” and the 38th Godzilla movie, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire.”
“Wicked,” a song-by-song adaptation of the first half of the long-running Broadway musical, was the only top-10 outlier, counting as original, if only by a witchy whisker. (In the alternative reality of Hollywood, a movie can be “original” even if it is derivative of something else. What matters is whether the source material has previously been used for a stand-alone theatrical movie.)
Those hit franchise movies and others — the fourth chapter in the “Bad Boys” series, the 10th “Planet of the Apes” installment, “Gladiator II” — drove ticket sales in the United States and Canada to an estimated $8.75 billion for the year, according to Comscore. Theater owners are thrilled: Despite a shortage of major movies in the first half of the year — a result of two union strikes — 2024 ticket sales are expected to fall only 3 percent from 2023.
Higher ticket prices propped up the 2024 total, analysts said.
Over the weekend, “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” was the No. 1 box office draw. The sequel to a sequel collected about $38 million for a two-week domestic total of $138 million. The big-budget prequel “Mufasa: The Lion King” was a close second with $37 million, lifting its domestic total to $113 million. “Nosferatu,” a horror remake, took in $21 million for a sturdy $40 million since arriving on Christmas Day.
“We feel very good, which is not something many of us would have said last year at this time,” said Michael O’Leary, the chief executive of the National Association of Theater Owners, which represents 33,000 movie screens in the United States. About 76 percent of Americans ages 12 to 74 put down their phones long enough to attend at least one movie in theaters in the past year, Mr. O’Leary said, citing a recent National Research Group study.
“And we’re excited about what is coming,” he added.
In 2025, studios will parade out “Superman,” “Karate Kid: Legends,” “Jurassic World Rebirth,” a live-action “Lilo & Stitch,” “Freakier Friday,” “The Naked Gun,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and at least 33 other major franchise sequels, reboots and remakes.
Hollywood has not given up on originality. Sony Pictures released a handful of originals in 2024 and found a hit in the drama “It Ends With Us,” which took in $149 million in North America. DreamWorks Animation was encouraged by the $143 million in domestic ticket sales that “The Wild Robot” achieved in the fall.
In the months ahead, Warner Bros. will notably release original films from Ryan Coogler (“Sinners,” being marketed as “a new vision of fear”), Paul Thomas Anderson (a still-untitled crime thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio), Bong Joon Ho (“Mickey 17”) and Joseph Kosinski (“F1,” a big-budget racing movie).
The problem is that Americans tend to say one thing and do another: They complain that Hollywood does not make enough original films, only to stay home or go elsewhere when studios call their bluff. Over the past year, the moviegoing masses rejected originals like “Here,” “Fly Me to the Moon,” “Argylle,” “Horizon: An American Saga,” “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” “Lisa Frankenstein,” “Y2K” and “Megalopolis.”
To be fair, all of those films received soft-to-poor reviews, diminishing their appeal. More than ever, moviegoers want insurance: Is this activity going to be worth my time and money?
Ticket prices have increased. Throw in the cost of popcorn, parking and a babysitter and — yikes, maybe let’s not take the chance on an original movie: Two tickets for “Sonic 3,” please. We at least had fun at the second one. We know what we’re getting.
For the most part, however, originals with terrific reviews did not break out, either.
“Saturday Night,” “A Real Pain,” “Challengers,” “Conclave,” “Thelma,” “The Apprentice,” “Anora,” “My Old Ass” and “The Substance” — each championed by critics, each available in at least 1,000 theaters — took in a combined $147 million in North America. “Civil War” and “Longlegs” were indie hits, but neither grossed anywhere near the $100 million mark.
To compare, “Inside Out 2” collected $653 million by itself.
In May, Universal released “The Fall Guy,” a well-reviewed action comedy that cost at least $200 million to make and market. It was the first time in 19 years that Hollywood’s all-important summer season did not start with a superhero or a sequel. “The Fall Guy” shared a name and some basic DNA with a television drama that ran on ABC from 1981 to 1986. But the movie’s story was entirely new.
Ker-thud: Opening-weekend ticket sales added up to $28 million in North America, the worst start to the season since 1995.
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