Mysterious Case of the Missing Box-Office Billions

The hiding-in-plain sight solution to find them, and 6 more ways to fix the movie-theater business

(Photo illustration by The Ankler)

If you’ve been following the U.S. box-office rollercoaster over the last few months, you know that it’s been a fairly dour ride. Theatrical petered out at just under $9 billion, 2024 has started off with each weekend lower than 2023’s comparable weekend and projections show that the domestic box office will struggle to get $8 billion in America this year. Oof!

For more than a decade — 2009 to 2019 — the U.S. box office consistently generated $10 billion-plus in theatrical revenue. Then, for reasons you know — Covid, strikes, etc — but also ones you aren’t accounting for, it didn’t, despite a lot of predictions and industry expectation that the 2023 domestic total could reach that eleven-figure milestone again.

So . . . where did that missing billion go? Or this year’s missing $2 billion?

The multiple work stoppages of the last four years don’t fully explain it. “Superhero fatigue” is a popular reason of late, but does it hold up to scrutiny? What role does streaming play? What about industry consolidation? We also can’t ignore that Hollywood — both tech behemoths and traditional Hollywood studios — continues to refuse to pick up the giant pile of money sitting right where they left it four-plus years ago.

In this issue, I will . . .

• Explore three explanations for why the domestic box office is down . . .

• Including why Disney’s Fox acquisition, in particular, is to blame.

• My exclusive analysis of what 18 straight-to-streaming films could have made at the box office.

• And offer two big solutions —and five smaller ideas — for how to find that missing revenue.