This was supposed to be the summer when the North American box office returned to form — finally from the pandemic slump.
“We believe that a dramatic reawakening of the industrywide domestic box office has begun,” Adam Aron, chief executive of AMC Entertainment, the continent’s largest theater operator, gleefully told analysts in May. He predicted that Hollywood’s summer movies would be “barn burners, one after another.”
Moviegoers, alas, were not cooperative. Multiplexes in the United States and Canada had their worst summer since 1981, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the Covid pandemic years, when many theaters were closed for long periods.
A lackluster summer for the movies
North American cinema box office revenues each summer
Is it time for Hollywood to concede that a lot of moviegoers in North America are never coming back? That movie theaters have permanently lost 20 to 25 percent of their customers?
Those questions, which started as horrified whispers in studio hallways last year, have become more openly discussed in recent months.
Weekly ticket sales over the summer highlight the concern. There were only two weeks when theaters in North America collected more than $300 million. Theaters exceeded that threshold nine weeks in the summer of 2019 when adjusting for inflation.
Only two weeks this summer surpassed $300 million in ticket sales
Weekly summer North American box office revenue
Even in 2024, also a year in which there were only two $300 million-plus weeks, total ticket sales for the summer were higher because of bigger hits, including “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.”
Part of the challenge for movie studios is marketing: Reaching a mass audience with ads for new movies has become harder, a result of media fragmentation.
To cope, studios have increased their reliance on franchises with already-established fan bases. Over the summer, 26 movies collected at least $20 million in North America. Twenty of them were franchises of some sort — sequels, remakes, spinoffs, reboots or based on a hit video game.
But almost all of Hollywood’s franchises have been so overworked that they are delivering diminishing returns. More than half of the franchises released this summer have done worse than previous iterations.
Two films that underperformed compared with previous iterations
Cumulative North American box office revenue each week
Sequels and reboots that did about as well as previous iterations tended to be newer (the animated “Bad Guys” series is only three years old) or had a special marketing hook (the “28 Days” series brought back Danny Boyle, its founding director).
Two films that performed on a par with previous iterations
Cumulative North American box office revenue each week
Nothing is more valuable to a movie studio than a revived franchise. Disney did just that over the summer with “Lilo & Stitch,” an animation and live-action hybrid movie that benefited from pent-up demand. (The film’s franchise predecessor came out in 2002.) Disney also successfully rebooted its “Fantastic Four” superhero movie series, albeit on a more modest scale.
“Superman,” from Warner’s DC Studios, did not do as well as “Man of Steel,” the company’s previous stand-alone Superman movie. But the new installment did well enough — about $352 million in domestic ticket sales — to justify another chapter. Warner Bros. has fast-tracked a “Superman” follow-up.
Two films that performed better than previous iterations
Cumulative North American box office revenue each week
Which is to say: Hollywood’s franchise strategy is not going anywhere. As of now, studios have at least 14 franchise films scheduled for summer 2026.
