So Far, Moral, Uplifting Movies Dominate 2024’s Box Office
By Movieguide® Contributor
2024’s top movies at the box office all promote strong morals and boast uplifting plots, while more perverted movies, even when they have a strong backing, have sunk.
The year’s top movie so far — INSIDE OUT 2 — follows an uplifting, family-friendly, coming-of-age story. A portion of Movieguide®’s review reads:
INSIDE OUT 2 is a marvelous, family-friendly animated movie. The movie is delightful, funny, inventive, and heartwarming. It has many positive messages. For example, it promotes “the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10c) and doing the right thing, controlling your emotions and not letting anxieties overcome your decision making. INSIDE OUT 2 also promotes kindness, friendship, repentance, and forgiveness. MOVIEGUIDE® advises caution for younger children for scenes of peril and a large scary-looking but nonthreatening character. Unlike other recent animated movies, INSIDE OUT 2 doesn’t have any woke or politically correct content.
Having been in theaters for two weeks, its total domestic gross has crossed $400 million, a better showing than last year’s top movie – BARBIE – at this point in the movie’s cycle.
DUNE: PART TWO, in second place, boasts a similarly edifying storyline, with a story of good versus evil and the struggle for freedom. Its strong release at the beginning of March was the main catalyst for the healthy box office heading into the major summer months and nine out of the top 10 movies of the year owe some of their success to the momentum it generated.
The rest of the top five – GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE, KUNG FU PANDA 4 and KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES – each follow suit, with an uplifting, morally strong plot being a common thread throughout each of the movies. In total, these five movies alone have accounted for just under $1.1 billion, roughly a third of the year’s total box office earnings.
While this is partially due to a weaker year for theaters, it also highlights the fact that morally strong, uplifting movies play a much bigger role in the entertainment industry than Hollywood might want you to think.
For example, a movie that received tons of promotion, stretching back to last fall, before its release was the Zendaya-led CHALLENGERS, an abhorrent movie about a depraved love triangle. Despite major promotion and a strong lead actress, the movie currently sits as the No. 19 movie of the year, with a gross just crossing $50 million.
With estimates at the beginning of the year of a weaker box office due to last year’s strikes proving true, the industry has hope for a stronger second half of the year in the lineup of upcoming family-friendly titles. These upcoming movies include DESPICABLE ME 4, HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON, THE WILD ROBOT, MOANA 2 and SONIC 3.
Movieguide® previously reported:
While last year’s box office fared better than expected, it suffered from a large lack of family movies, a genre that has proven to be a bright spot in a lackluster year for the theater industry.
With the help of WONKA, 2023’s box office skated in just above a total gross of $9 billion. Heading into 2024, experts predicted the industry would be lucky to come in above $8 billion by the end of the year. Now, halfway through the year, these predictions have been proven right as the industry sits at just $3.1 billion heading into the summer months, down 23% from this time last year.
However, despite the dismal start, family-friendly movies have given the industry something to cling to, with the promise of a stronger second half to the year riding on their popularity. Last weekend, INSIDE OUT 2 had the strongest debut of the year, bringing in $154 million. Less than a week later, it now sits at the No. 2 spot, quickly approaching DUNE: PART TWO’s throne. It will, however, have another contender hot on its tail when DISPICABLE ME 4 releases on July 3rd.
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