Not all months are created equal. And this May, thankfully, looks nothing like last May. The movie industry is on the cusp of what could be a record-crushing Memorial Day weekend, with both Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch remake and Paramount/Skydance’s Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning having the potential to gross around $200 million worldwide each over the Friday-Sun frame. After a slow start, this year is now running 16 percent ahead of 2024, and a best-case-scenario holiday weekend might be enough to end the month above even the $3.3 billion notched the same time period in 2023, which was built off the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Little Mermaid, and Fast X.
What’s notable about the current box office momentum is that this year’s movies have already pulled grosses healthy enough that the industry doesn’t need a record-setting holiday weekend. So in the spirit of optimism, and a week until Memorial Day, here are a few pre-summer insights.
Disney Might Not Need Marvel to Save It
With a likely domestic total of around $175 million (on par with Eternals) and a global total of approximately $415 million (similar to Captain America: Brave New World), Disney’s Thunderbolts doesn’t need to be an overwhelming box office superhero. At best, good reviews and solid buzz are a step toward persuading general audiences to trust Marvel to deliver tentpole entertainment that doesn’t require a PhD in MCU to follow the plot. With Lilo & Stitch set to make a splash, and the likes of both Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash likely to soar at year’s end, the extent to which Disney needs the MCU to return to its late-2010s heights can be mitigated by strong showings elsewhere.
Pam & Mike Are Out of the Woods
Before April 4, the overall year-to-date domestic gross, counting last year’s holdovers, was $1.424 billion, compared to $1.61 billion at the end of 2024’s first quarter. But that was before A Minecraft Movie ($929 million worldwide with strong legs, even after debuting on P.V.O.D.), Sinners (the first live-action original to pass $200 million domestic since Gravity in 2013), and Final Destination: Bloodlines (a $52 million debut for a franchise that averaged $55 million in unadjusted domestic lifetime totals).
These three WBD releases have overperformed, and will likely end up earning around $1.5 billion on a combined production budget of around $300 million, further proof that co-C.E.O.s Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca’s film department is, with help from semiregular co-financer Legendary, on a roll. And much of this is not due to franchise and marketing, but smart bets on what audiences want. Final Destination: Bloodlines, an “I.P. for I.P.’s sake” play intended for HBO Max, offered an easy-to-explain, “hot people get Rube Goldberg-ed to death” concept without too much franchise lore or hammy nostalgia callbacks. It’s the difference between selling older I.P.s to older fans and encouraging new fans. We’ll see if Karate Kid: Legends, Freakier Friday, and The Naked Gun can bring in today’s kids, rather than aiming for the Arrested Development demographics.
That WBD has pulled this off inspires cautious optimism for the third Superman reboot since 2006. While Ryan Coogler’s Sinners (currently leggier than The Hangover, Inception, and Gravity) wasn’t a youth-skewing offering, the opening weekend A+ CinemaScore grade from the under-18 set reminds us that kids often become hooked on movies that feel a little taboo.
Everyone Gets a Piece of the Pie
I never thought I’d see another live-action original gross as much as Sinners is probably going to in North America, given the extent to which moviegoing has become centralized on pre-established franchises. It’s a sign that moviegoers who’ve aged out, or moved on from Disney’s industry-dominating brands, including MCU, are still going to the movies. Even if Thunderbolts (or The New Avengers, if you’re nasty) isn’t an overwhelming smash, the theatrical ecosystem need not depend entirely on whether newer incarnations of Disney’s 2010s franchises can pull 2010s-level grosses.
Once upon a time, Disney’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy could soar past $700 million worldwide alongside Fox’s $500 million–grossing Rio 2, while WB’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies and Paramount’s Transformers: Age of Extinction could pull over/under $1 billion globally, while Lionsgate could launch a new franchise in Keanu Reeves’s rescued from V.O.D. John Wick. A return to the good ol’ status quo would mean a return to when no one studio or genre overwhelmingly dominates the theatrical ecosystem or the zeitgeist. Whether this summer approaches the $4 billion heights of 2023, the hope is that every studio shares in the box office pie.
It’s Safe to Gamble on the Cheap Seats
Last week, AMC announced that, as of July 9, it would offer 50 percent discounts on Wednesday, at least for its AMC Stubs members. Theaters have long offered heavy discounts on Tuesday, making it a boon for the box office and admissions. The hope is that “Cheap Wednesday” will encourage audiences to see more, and more varied, films theatrically. Coupled with a multiyear trend of movies big (Deadpool & Wolverine) and small (Everything Everywhere All at Once) showing longer legs, we’re also seeing audiences show up to a movie in weekend three or month two. So if you haven’t seen Sinners yet, you’re not part of the problem, but part of the solution.
