For six years now, everything that’s happened with the box office — even everything good — has been couched in a hangdog, post-Covid air.
The “since Covid” modifiers imply a general backdrop of diminished expectations, as if the entire industry has been demoted to junior varsity.
In that time, it has been one “dog ate my homework” excuse after another for why movies didn’t perform.
Well, guess what? We just had the biggest box office weekend in history — that’s ever. Led by the opening of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the July 31 weekend box office topped $430 million. Spider-Man could become the first movie to gross $1 billion in North America alone, and the overall yearly box office is on track to be the highest since 2019.
It doesn’t mean that every movie is an automatic home run — when was that ever the case? — or that there aren’t challenges in theatrical distribution. But there is one thing we can finally, conclusively, without question say: Human beings are open to seeing movies in the theater. Because the summer box office hasn’t just been about Spider-Man — there are the YouTube horror hits (A24’s Backrooms and Focus Features’ Obsession, which combined for more than $883 million worldwide), the classic blockbusters (Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5, the highest-grossing film, not adjusted for inflation, in the decades-old franchise) and even A-list auteurs (Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which is the Batman filmmaker’s biggest movie ever).
It’s time to give this era a designation: post-post-Covid, maybe? I’ll workshop it. Still, regardless of the name, it’s clear movies are back.
Some of them anyway.
Ahead, the big winners (and some unfortunate losers) at the box office this summer.
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