The Biggest Box Office Lessons of 2024

To observe the 2024 domestic box office was to basically stay on a tremendously exhausting rollercoaster for 12 months. One minute, Dune: Part Two and Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire are tearing up the March 2024 box office. The next, May 2024 is delivering historically sluggish numbers. Hollywood’s refusal to give artists fair livable wages in 2023 (thus inspiring a pair of labor strikes) led to a stark decrease in theatrical movies this year. Combine that with the dwindling amount of studios delivering theatrical films and the box office could go from outstanding to whatever went on with Joker: Folie a Deux real fast.

In life, we take lessons from victories and losses alike. Both high and low points in existence can be prime fodder for self-improvement. The 2024 box office’s various peaks and valleys are no different. Everything from Inside Out 2 to Borderlands offers a tremendous lesson for all Hollywood studios to absorb. Above all else, though, 2024 reaffirmed that the theatrical experience is here to stay. Even after two strikes, COVID-19, studios committing to (then retreating from) streaming, and so many other external problems, the big screen is still standing. 2024’s biggest hits reflected this exciting reality … but the low points of the year also indicated where work still needs to be done.

Stop Being Afraid of “Femme” Cinema
Gender is a societal construct. There is no such thing as “girly” or “boy” movies; people of all gender identities can like any kind of motion pictures. Hollywood doesn’t tend to think like that, though. Typically, Tinseltown is in love with taking classically “boy” genres and giving them a “girly” twist to create potential new crowdpleasers. It’s an unfortunate symptom of how films with largely “feminine” aesthetics are often persona non grata in Hollywood.

The Fall Guy was a prime example of this phenomenon. Its trailers emphasized Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt smooching as well as Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s abs, but also lots and lots of classic David Letich/87North action. An attempt to make “Nobody but also a 2004 Robert Luketic” movie didn’t click with audiences. Meanwhile, Sony/Columbia’s It Ends With Us ended summer 2024 with a profound bang. A motion picture perfect for the wine mom and Booktok crowd, it didn’t try and smuggle in a “girly” movie into an aesthetic that’s coded as “masculine.” It just reveled in being a romantic drama aimed at women. The result was a massive box office hit that outgrossed all three of Sony’s far costlier 21st century Ghostbusters movies.

The bottom line? Embrace marginalized genders, Hollywood. Instead of trying to slightly tweak genres that typically largely attract men so that “they’re now for women!”, just make more straightforward rom-com’s, romantic dramas, and other similar titles.

Don’t Give Up on “Troubled” Genres
In 2021, it certainly looked like there was no place anymore for the live-action musical in 2020s cinema. Dear Evan Hansen, In the Heights, even the outstanding West Side Story all flopped. Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, meanwhile, got shunted from a theatrical release to an Amazon Prime streaming debut. However, major studios didn’t abandon the live-action musical, which led to 2023 hit Wonka. That commitment really paid off in 2024 with, of course, Wicked. Ironically, Wicked financier and distributor Universal Pictures was also behind Dear Evan Hansen!

Hollywood has a bad habit of taking the wrong lessons from flops and hits alike. In the former category, studios will write off entire genres if a film or streak of movies bombs rather than asses nuanced individual problems with specific features. Musicals weren’t being ignored in 2021. There were just specific circumstances (poor release dates, simultaneous streaming bows, etc.) keeping 2021’s live-action musicals from succeeding. Wicked shows what happens when you realize no genre is cursed; you just need the right movie to bring people back to theaters. Let’s apply that approach to the theatrical comedy next!

More Original Movies Please
The top ten biggest movies of 2024 domestically were almost exclusively sequels. The dominance of franchise fare that’s been going on since the mid-2000s only kept on growing in 2024. However, that didn’t mean the year was devoid of non-sequel hits. On the contrary, It Ends With Us, The Wild Robot, and IF all cracked $100+ million domestically. Meanwhile, Longlegs, The Beekeeper, and Civil War turned into unexpected sleeper hits. Erotic tennis movie Challengers, meanwhile, outgrossed the likes of Madame Web and The Strangers: Chapter 1!

Movie theaters don’t just belong to franchise fare. Similarly, audiences will show up for more than just motion pictures with a “two” or “three” or “legacy” in the title. However, these movies have to exist in theaters in the first place, not to mention arrive preceded by a major marketing campaign that puts the title on people’s radar. Don’t let the ubiquity of franchise fare among the top ten biggest movies of 2024 fool you, there is still a craving for original features out there. Even in the indie scene, A24 was reminded of this through Heretic and We Live in Time outgrossing MaXXXine.

Arthouse Titles Need Love and Care
Throughout 2024, Bleecker Street, IFC Films, and Sony Pictures Classics kept debuting arthouse titles directly into 600+ theaters. The result was a slew of titles like Rumours, Kneecap, Slingshot, The Outrun, and countless others that had some of the worst wide-release opening weekends of the year. They’d instantly bomb and get thrown out of theaters after one weekend.

This release practice made some sense back in 2020 & 2021, when so many arthouse theaters were shut down. It was hard to build up momentum in this landscape, why not make as much money as you can over one weekend? In 2024, it’s a staggeringly nonsensical release strategy. Arthouse titles are all about the long game, not just making money in one weekend. Something like Kneecap should have room to build up an audience long-term, not plopped right into wide release over Deadpool & Wolverine’s second weekend.

By contrast, Neon had lots of success with a gradual rollout for Perfect Days across 2024’s earliest weekends. Janus Films scored immensely respectable box office hauls through drawn-out theatrical release strategies for Flow and All We Imagine as Light. The independently distributed Hundreds of Beavers, meanwhile, has garnered a mythic reputation thanks to a theatrical release strategy that’s lasted almost an entire year. Despite never playing in around 50-ish theaters at once, Beavers has already outgrossed multiple Bleecker Street titles that opened instantly in wide release! Patience is a virtue in many cases. 2024 proved that’s especially true for arthouse titles. Bleecker Street and Sony Classics, remember that for 2025!

The Kid’s Are Alright (And Seeing Movies!)
Back in November 2021, media analysts everywhere wondered if family audiences would ever return to movie theaters regularly. The box office flopping of Lightyear in June 2022 (the first new theatrical Pixar release since COVID shut theaters down) only exacerbated those concerns. In 2024, such woes feel like a distant dreams. Not only did families come to theaters in 2024, they arrived in droves. Inside Out 2 was the biggest movie of the year domestically and globally. As of this writing, four PG-rated movies make up the top five biggest movies of 2024. Family-friendly tentpoles Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King, meanwhile, dominated the December box office.

It’s an interesting phenomenon given the circumstances of COVID. Older moviegoers well-versed in theatrical moviegoing are difficult to lure back to multiplexes. The new generation of audiences, though (supposedly only obsessed with Roblox and their phones), clearly love going to the theater. That’s a very encouraging sign for the future of theatrical moviegoing. Early 2020s worries about this demographic turned out to be unfounded. Kids and family moviegoers were an outright savior, in fact, for the 2024 box office.

We Need Year-Round Scheduling
Moana 2 and Wicked simultaneously thrived at Thanksgiving, with Gladiator II thrown in as an extra hit for good measure. Over Christmas 2024, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King were also simultaneous moneymakers. Barbenheimer was no post-March 2020 fluke. Multiple movies can thrive at the box office in the 2020s. That just makes the erratic scheduling of 2024 so strange. Even with the dual strikes affecting the first five months of 2024 to a severe degree, studios like Universal and Disney could’ve upgraded streaming-exclusive releases like The Greatest Hits or The Killer to a big screen launch.

Just focusing on releasing a small group of costly tentpoles on “surefire” weekends in a calendar year isn’t working. After all, if a Free Guy bombs at the box office, what can pick up the slack? Remember: Moana 2 became the first movie in history this year to gross $40+ million over the post-Thanksgiving weekend. If a movie resonates with people, it’ll flourish anytime of the year. Once Hollywood remembers that and starts putting more films in every corner of the year, the box office will thrive. Speaking of lack of films…

We Need More Films of All Genres
In 2018, Warner Bros, Pictures put out 21 theatrical films (including They Shall Not Grow Old’s two days of December 2018 play). The previous year, the studio put out 18 titles, and 2019 was graced with 19 theatrical Warner Bros. releases. In 2024, Warner Bros. Pictures dropped just nine theatrical releases into theaters. Similarly, 20th Century Fox supplied theaters with 16 movies in 2016, while 20th Century Studios only delivered three(!!!) to the big screen in 2024. The last few years of staggering consolidation (Disney buying Fox, Warner Bros. coming under David Zaslav’s thumb, etc.) have left the cinematic landscape with a scarce number of movie studios.

The surviving labels are more timid than ever before. Disney is willing to burn billions on Disney+, yet won’t let original 20th Century Studios comedies or genre movies go to theaters. No wonder the box office isn’t returning to pre-March 2020 levels. Audiences want to go to the movies. Studios, however, refuse to provide them with titles while unchecked corporate consolidation has left fewer providers of new films than ever for theaters and moviegoers.

It’s not even like the studios are being asked to suddenly revive the 1930s infrastructure where MGM produced 50+ films a year. Fresh independent films like The Toxic Avenger, A Nice Indian Boy, Ponyboi, Eden, and Cloud, just to name a few, could’ve easily been picked up by a major studio and help fill in release gaps in September or October. Major studios need to embrace unique titles to provide more consistent year-round slates of new releases for audiences and theater owners. Surely if Horizon: An American Saga - Part One can get major studio distribution, so can other indie films! Without more robust slates than, say, WB’s laughably meek 2024 line-up, the box office can never recover. Hoping for theatrical revenue to hit pre-2020 levels with the current theatrical studio landscape is like praying for glorious crops without watering your plants.