2023 was a bad year for Hollywood. Consider the top grossing pictures (per Box Office Mojo):
| Ra nk |
Title | Domestic | Global | Product- ion cost |
Distributor |
| 1 | Barbie | $636,220,453 | $1,441,820,453 | $145M | Warner Bros. |
| 2 | The Super Mario Bros. Movie | $574,934,330 | $1,361,367,353 | $100M | Universal |
| 3 | Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse | $381,311,319 | $690,516,673 | $100M | Columbia |
| 4 | Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 | $358,995,815 | $845,555,777 | $250M | Disney |
| 5 | Oppenheimer | $326,094,985 | $952,028,985 | $100M | Universal |
| 6 | The Little Mermaid | $298,172,056 | $569,626,289 | $250M | Disney |
| 7 | Avatar: The Way of Water | $283,067,859 | 2022 release | $460M | 20th |
| 8 | Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | $214,504,909 | $476,071,180 | $200M | Disney |
| 9 | John Wick: Chapter 4 | $187,131,806 | $440,146,694 | $100M | Lions Gate |
| 10 | Sound of Freedom | $184,177,725 | $248,106,204 | $14.5M | Angel |
| 11 | Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour | $179,635,196 | $250,340,701 | $20M | – |
Production costs are estimates and from miscellaneous sources.
A number of things are apparent from these results. First, Greta Gerwig, who wrote and directed Barbie, has cemented her position as a powerful force in Hollywood. Congratulations to her. Barbie, despite many predictions of its failure, is one of the highest grossing pictures ever and, well, money talks.
Second, the overall box office grosses for 2023 remain 20% lower than the pre-pandemic grosses in 2019. They may never recover.
Third, we may have seen the end of the blockbuster superhero movie. For GOTG3 to make money it needed to gross $625M by most estimates and it did. But it was the only superhero picture to do so in a year filled with releases of superhero pictures. The rest all lost money.
Third, it was a very, very bad year for Disney. Nearly all of its 2023 releases, particularly its live action releases, lost money. Additionally, its other business units, especially its streaming unit, all lost money. Clearly, they’re doing something wrong. I presume that its CEO Bob Iger will blame it on the other guy but it’s hard to see how he could survive another year like 2023.
Even with its gargantuan budget Avatar 2 made money. Not a lot when you add the promotion budget to the production budget but it made money. Will there be another sequel?
#10 and #11 on the list must send shivers up the spines of Hollywood execs. Neither was a Hollywood movie. Sound of Freedom was crowd-sourced. The Taylor Swift movie was financed, produced, and promoted by her and her people. Add one more picture: Godzilla Minus 1. Released on December 1, the $25 million movie has already grossed three times its production cost. That highlights a critical problem: making Hollywood movies is too damned expensive.
IMO the role of “wokeness” is much exaggerated and only tells part of the story. Corporate Hollywood movies are designed by committees and look it. They’re derivative and repetitive with hardly a creative bone in their collective body and people are bored with them.
We have yet to see what the long-term effects of the writers’ and SAG-AFTRA strikes will be. If they’ve done permanent damage to the studios, that in turn will be devastating to the economy of Los Angeles and that of California more generally.
It has ben years since wife and I went to a movie. I will probably end up going sometime with our adopted grandkids to some kiddie movie but just dont see much worth seeing. Sequels and superheroes just dont do it. Will probably stream Barbie at some point.
Steve
Dave Schuler: IMO the role of “wokeness†is much exaggerated and only tells part of the story.
Barbie was about as woke as could be and was a huge hit. A lot of the movies that flubbed just weren’t very good.
And you are right on this point, as well: They are spending way too much, and then depending on special effects rather than story to carry the freight. Consider Everything Everywhere All at Once. Great effects, great story, great acting, great costumes, great music, great choreography, innovative and strange, all at a fraction of the cost ($25 million, grossing $141 million, tons of awards).
“ Additionally, its (Disney) other business units, especially its streaming unit, all lost money. â€
It wasn’t that bad. The theme parks made a lot money; through at the price of customer satisfaction at value for the cost. ESPN and the cable TV division continue to generate profits, but are declining as cutting the cord continues.
But yeah; Iger second time will be hard since there aren’t a lot acquirable IP lying around that is his speciality. In fact, the “dream†solution is in that chart — The Super Mario Bros movie. But Nintendo is not acquirable and Nintendo is determined to develop their IP on their terms.
There is still tons of good material for Disney to exploit, especially if they do animated stuff. Redoing old animated stuff with live action is always iffy IMO. People may or may not take to the actors you choose and you have to change the story to accomodate live actors. There are a lot fo kids books, lots of mythology and lots of history to choose from, they just need to turn it into a good story with a couple of good songs.
The woke stuff? Disney has always aimed a lot of its stuff at pre-teen girls with the princess (or similar) character being the hero. That would now be called woke. It’s mostly a pejorative used to mean whatever you want it to mean. The better point is that if you are trying to convey some kind of message, it needs to come second to having a good story and good acting/voices.
Steve