
Are Theaters Recovering From Last Year’s Strikes?
By Movieguide® Contributor
It’s been a year since the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, and movie theaters are still trying to recover.
“Marcus Theatres saw revenue and profit dip last quarter but is the latest exhibitor to report a soft April and May leading into a notable positive shift in June as the industry shakes off the impact of the Hollywood strikes last year,” per Deadline.
While on a post-earnings call with analysts, CEO Greg Marcus said of the movies released during the first part of the year, “It has to be what I call a normal slate. If you release 100 films and not one of them is tentpole, that is not a normal slate.”
He added, however, that he’s “glad they were putting movies out there” at the start of 2024. But they just weren’t tentpoles.
As the theater industry starts to rebound from the strikes and the lingering effects of the pandemic, it needs a combination of small and large films to help bring interest in going to the movies to a more normal level.
“You’ve got to take enough swings and you got to get people back in the habit,” Marcus explained. “Twenty years from now, the number of kids who will say to someone, ‘I remember my parents took me to my first movie. They took me to the living room and we turned on the TV and we watched INSIDE OUT 2,’ will be zero.”
Marcus agrees that there is no better way to experience a new film than on the big screen with surround sound.
Movieguide® knows that the best way to get the biggest audiences into theaters is with family-friendly movies like INSIDE OUT 2, which has already earned $618,789,769.
“INSIDE OUT 2’s success is definitive proof that Movieguide®’s advocacy work impacts Disney,” says Robby Baehr, Movieguide® CEO. “This is the first movie Pixar has released in years that doesn’t flaunt an immoral agenda. Instead, because of our Annual Report to the Entertainment Industry, Disney and Pixar chose to cater to families and focus on positive, uplifting messages, and it’s already paying out dividends.”
Other summer releases, like DESPICABLE ME 4 and TWISTERS, have brought viewers back to the theaters in droves, thanks to their “moral, pro-family worldview” and “redemptive story,” respectively.
As of this writing, DESPICABLE ME 4 is holding the No. 2 spot at the 2024 box office, with a take of $300,326,335, right behind INSIDE OUT 2. TWISTERS sits at the No. 9 spot.
While these numbers show a good start to the industry’s comeback, it will take a few more years before it achieves pre-pandemic levels, as Movieguide® reported:
A new report from PwC predicted that the global box office would not top pre-pandemic levels until 2026 as the industry continues to struggle with consumer habits set during the pandemic.
This report placed a sobering reality on the theater business which has begun to find some hope this summer after strong showings from INSIDE OUT 2 and DESPICABLE ME 4 which recently helped carry the domestic gross for the year over $4 billion. Though more than $1 billion has been collected over the past month thanks to these giants, the industry is still set to drop its revenue to roughly $8 billion for the year after collecting $9 billion in 2023.
This year’s struggle is largely caused by the dual strikes last summer which led to a very sparse release schedule for the first half of 2024. The industry, however, would have struggled regardless as theaters strive to win back the audience lost during the pandemic. This battle has been harder than previously thought. At the start of the year, experts predicted the industry would top pre-pandemic levels in 2025, but this new PwC report pushes the estimate to 2026.