The summer movie season matters, and not only because it provides escape from the abject torture of enjoying nature and spending time with your family. It’s the season when the industry makes its money, and as such, its successes and failures often point the way forward.
If a movie fails, we’re unlikely to see another one like it for a while, while an unexpected success can inspire years of copycats from a risk-averse industry.
The top of the summer box-office surely signals to executives that while audiences are still enamored with familiar properties, they appreciate a break. It had been nine years since “Inside Out,” which roughly coincided with its maker Pixar’s worst streak in their history.
“Lightyear” was a bomb, and “Elemental” was below their standards, but “Inside Out 2,” adored by critics and audiences alike, has grossed $1.6 billion and counting, making it the 10th-highest grossing movie of all time. If Pixar is smart, and so far it seems like they are, we’ll be getting “Inside Out 3” sometime around 2033.
“Deadpool and Wolverine,” the other unambiguous smash of the summer, also benefits from being both fresh and familiar. It had been six years since a Deadpool movie and seven since “Logan,” which featured the death of Wolverine.
The beauty (or the awfulness, depending on your perspective) of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is that no one stays dead for long, and “Deadpool and Wolverine” found incredible commercial success by teaming up two of the franchise’s most beloved characters. It was a much-needed smash for the scuffling Marvel Studios, and a reminder that when you add bankable stars and a smidge of newness to a successful franchise, ticket sales usually follow.
“Twisters,” which came nearly 30 years after its predecessor, basically followed the same formula this summer to similar success.
While the superhero genre still sits atop the power rankings, horror is close behind.
The horror renaissance has been afoot for decades now, but this summer demonstrated its wide berth. Osgood Perkins’s “Longlegs” rode its bizarre Nicolas Cage performance (but I repeat myself) to a shocking $90 million gross. It’s a good-not-great movie, but word surely spread about its wild central performance. If it were in another genre, viewers would likely wait until it hit their home screens, but horror is the one genre viewers consistently want to watch in theaters.
They also showed up for “Alien: Romulus,” which just scored a big opening weekend, proving the rock-steady stability of a horror franchise that is now 45 years old. The actors and directors change with every film, but people will still show up to see that Xenomorph wreak havoc.
Then there’s M. Night Shyamalan, whose pop-horror movies always do well enough to justify the next one.
His latest, “Trap,” wasn’t a huge hit, but it was embraced by critics and some fans as the kind of original and commercial filmmaking we don’t get enough of these days. A tense thriller about a serial killer trying to balance his murderous obsession with his duties as a suburban dad, “Trap” is both a personal statement on the complexities of fatherhood and a nifty Hitchcock homage that displays a nuanced understanding of what audiences want.
Earlier this year, I wrote in this space on how TikTok could shape the next era of filmmakers. This summer, it shaped the movie landscape in the success of “It Ends With Us,” a romantic drama that has grossed over $150 million worldwide, a huge number for a non-franchise film in 2024.
Based on a 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover about a woman who suffers slow-building domestic abuse from her surgeon husband, the book was a hit upon its initial release in 2016 but didn’t make any bestseller lists until 2021, when it was embraced by #BookTok, an online community where book recommendations are shared.
The film adaptation was a direct result of its online popularity, and its success in this crowded summer, demonstrates the largely untapped power of TikTok as a means of gauging the market for a film before it has been made.
Expect executives to begin optioning the latest #BookTok smash any day now.
Overall, the summer box office remains behind last year’s count.
The year of “Barbenheimer” will likely remain an anomaly forever. But it has beaten expectations, especially since the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes halted several productions that were planned for release this year. It’s all good news.
The box office has been strong, and the lessons learned from this summer’s box office indicate a minor shift toward originality.
This cookie-cutter industry isn’t about to abandon franchises and well-worn genres, but at least they recognize that you can’t just give viewers exactly what they had before.