Movie studios learn lessons from turbulent year gone by

Movie ticket sales took a bit of a hit in 2024. The annual domestic box office is expected to end up at around $8.75 billion, down more than 3% from 2023, according to estimates from Comscore.

It’s not as dire as it was in the pandemic years, but it’s also not even close to the pre-pandemic norm when the annual box office regularly surpassed $11 billion.

Hollywood continues to learn lessons about what moviegoers really want, what works and what doesn’t. Here are the biggest takeaways from 2024.

The Hollywood strikes might have ended in 2023, putting productions back into full swing and sending stars out on the promotional circuit again — but the ripple effect of the work stoppages and contract standoffs showed their real effects on the 2024 release calendar.

The first two quarters were hit hardest, with tentpoles pushed later in the year (“Deadpool & Wolverine,” for one) or even into 2025 (like “Mission: Impossible 8”). With no Marvel movie kicking off the summer moviegoing season, the box office was down a devastating 27.5% from 2023 right before “Inside Out 2” opened in June.

Sequels and franchises dominated the top 10 movies of the year, as has often been the case in the past 15 years. But this year, films carrying a PG rating did especially well, starting with the biggest movie of 2024: “Inside Out 2,” which also became the biggest animated movie of all time, not accounting for inflation.

Family films with a PG rating — including “Despicable Me 4,”“Moana 2,”“Wicked,” “Kung Fu Panda 4,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” “Mufasa” and “The Wild Robot” — grossed over $2.9 billion this year, accounting for around 33% of the annual box office, according to Comscore. Movies rated PG-13, by contrast, made up about 30% of ticket sales.

After a quieter 2023 and several years without a film at the very top of the charts, the Walt Disney Co. came back roaring in 2024 with three of the top five movies of the year: “Inside Out 2,” “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Moana 2.” In mid-December, it crossed the $2 billion domestic mark, the second time any studio has done so since 2019 (that was also Disney, in 2022). Its 20th Century division also played an important part with “Alien: Romulus” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

Every year has high-profile flops and disappointments, and this was no exception. Sony had a rough go with its “Spider-Man” adjacent titles like “Madame Web” and “Kraven the Hunter” (but this also seems to be the fate lately for anyone not named “Deadpool”). Universal had higher hopes for “The Fall Guy,” as did Warner Bros. for “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

Then there were the filmmaker-driven (and financed) passion projects that failed to take off like Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”

As silly as it sounds, this is the year the novelty popcorn bucket became a star. It started with the accidentally suggestive “Dune: Part 2” creation, which “Deadpool & Wolverine” latched onto in a less accidental way. More recently, the “Nosferatu” coffin buckets have been fetching high resale prices.

It’s all part of a trend that theaters have been noticing since reopening during the pandemic: Moviegoers aren’t back in pre-pandemic numbers, but those who did come back were spending more on concessions and premium tickets (like IMAX and other large format screens) than ever before.

Everyone is optimistic for the film business in 2025, and the offerings for moviegoers — which include at least 110 films projected to open on over 2,000 screens — according to the National Association of Theatre Owners.