Box office is a drug. It’s an addiction.
What a movie costs and what it earns should have no bearing on overall quality, or its success, or failure. And yet it is easy for movie fans to obsess over such trivialities. Though is this any different than certain critics who flock to film festivals in Cannes, Venice, Toronto, et al., trying to hedge their bets in determining a shortlist of surefire Oscar contenders?
Again, this is a triviality: it is ranking art instead of putting a price on it. Plus if a critic includes box office or awards potential as commentary in a film review, well that seems more like publicity instead of criticism on the art of film. (Note: I’ve probably been guilty of this in the past, but we should all learn from our mistakes.)
After listening to a 2025 summer box office episode of The Town podcast, where host Matthew Belloni and box office pundit Scott Mendelson recap the movies they were bullish and skittish about at the start of the summer, one thing became abundantly clear. Nobody knows anything. Thinking how a movie will perform to seeing how it plays in the marketplace always leads to surprises.
Before April, you’d think Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was about to have Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, the heads of Warner Bros. Pictures, step into his office so he could press a button to unveil a trap door and they’d go down a chute to a moat full of alligators. Then came A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Final Destination Bloodlines, F1: The Movie, Superman, Weapons, and finally The Conjuring: Last Rites. Seven straight titles to win its opening weekend with earnings of $40M+. I’ve long contended that the horror genre is one of the pillars of the theater marketplace, because horror is typically a low to mid-level budget platformer and targeted to an audience that I feel is probably the most forgiving of quality and execution. So to see four of Warner Bros. Discovery’s string of hits are within the horror genre is a good sign for movie theaters. Furthermore, two were original films and not based on IP.
While Warner Bros.’s success this year may be an aberration, as studios have up and down years on account of output and projects in development, turnaround and postponement, I get the impression they are enjoying this box office high.
Studios and movie theater chains are complicit in wanting this high. Instead of chasing the high with looking for the next big thing, though, they should boost independents and mid-size budget movies. This is more of an issue with the studios. They have become neutered by IP. Take some risks. Learn to hit singles and doubles instead of the need to swing at the first pitch in hopes of making a home run opening weekend. Release more comedies. More romances. Movies with window dressers and up-and-comers. Celebrate movie anniversaries and have retrospectives – it’s basically free money. Eventize the theatrical experience with limited run sing-alongs (thank you Kpop Demon Hunters).
Hits and misses are a nature of the business. Then again, because a movie didn’t work for a mass audience doesn’t necessarily make it a failure. It could have been a victim of the release calendar or a studio feeling overly optimistic (see M3GAN 2.0 opening to $10M opposite F1’s $57M in June vs. M3GAN opening unopposed in January 2022 to the tune of $30M).
There’s also the sycophants that reside in chat rooms and social media that like to condemn a new movie’s reported success by defending a movie they love. The best example this year is DCEU fans mocking the $600M earnings of James Gunn’s Superman to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel, citing its lower box office and tickets sold. My simple answer: a different time and a different marketplace. As Mendelson acknowledged during the podcast, Superman did better than Man of Steel domestically. While premium large format (PLF) screens and inflated ticket prices have overshadowed the decrease in audience attendance and tickets sold, international earnings have been in a decline with some exceptions (Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning getting 67% of its earnings outside the U.S., for instance). The biggest earnings disparity of the year has to be Sinners only making $88M internationally vs. $278.5M domestic. Yet, Final Destination and Weapons have both made over $100M overseas. Jordan Peele’s debut, Get Out, and his subsequent releases also earned considerably less overseas in comparison to America. Is this the international market saying no to Black filmmakers (outside of IP) or a lack of marketing dollars being spent?
Regardless of how well a movie performs, what really matters is that it gets seen. Because without enough movies to show there are no movie theaters. And without movie theaters what becomes of movies and our experience with the medium? Do we becomes subservient to the streaming algorithms that aim to placate our likes and disregard the rest? When I was growing up, I loved going to different video stores and browsing the aisles. I would go through different phases in wanting to watch martial arts movies or gangster movies in addition to the new releases on home video. Taking chances with my rentals was my method in helping shape my love of movies.
Although, the real secret to success may be consistency. But what do I mean by consistency? A steady stream of movies for the masses.
I get the importance in a studio marking its territory and dating release dates a year or more in advance even without a title. I also know some movies play better if released in summer or fall. But we’re at a point now where the major studios are releasing 12-14 movies in theaters a year. It used to be double those numbers. (In 2023, Universal released 23 titles in the U.S. and Canada.) The independent studios – A24 and NEON among others – release the most collectively, but they aren’t beholden to IP or massive box office numbers like Disney. Most of their business comes through ancillary means. NEON has a media rights deal with Hulu. A24 titles can be found on MAX.
Having attendance spikes and increased foot traffic during the week with half-off pricing on Tuesdays – and now Wednesdays at AMC locations – is also good for a business where a majority of its money is made on Fridays and Saturdays. The hardest part is stacking titles close to each other with little room to breathe. When the dominoes finally fall and a loaded movie season ends we enter a dead period. This is bad.
I’m a firm believer that a good movie will play anywhere on the schedule. It can be one quadrant or four quadrants. Future Oscar contenders shouldn’t be penciled in for fall and winter.
My message to Hollywood: Play with scheduling and gauge audience reception. You might be surprised at how well a movie plays.
Oh, and stop chasing the box office high and seek the euphoria where art and commerce coalesce.
– Travis Leamons
President, Houston Film Critics Society
