REGINA - Welcome to my annual look back at the year that was at the motion picture box office, a year that was really crazy in all sorts of respects.
I was going to write this last week, but in a way I am glad I waited because it allows me to mention how Oppenheimer cleaned right up at the Golden Globe Awards the previous evening. After all, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer was one the big stories this past year at the movie box office, a box office that just topped $9 billion when 2023 ended.
You look at a number like that and you would think the Hollywood studios ought to be pleased. But no. Instead, we are hearing lots of talk about 2023 being Hollywood’s “worst year ever," mainly because 2023 was the year of the Writers Guild of America strike, and also the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists strike. Those wreaked havoc on production in general, so my guess is they are talking about that.
Maybe people are down in the dumps because of all of the rumors about yet another Hollywood studio — Warner Bros. — being a potential takeover target for either Paramount or possibly even Universal. That could mean yet another merged megastudio and more lost Hollywood jobs.
Or maybe people are down over what has been a generally underwhelming cinema box office since all of this summer's 'Barbieheimer' excitement ended. This fall had one big hit, the much-hyped concert pic Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour which basically saved the month of October for Hollywood at the box office. And maybe Wonka, too, which is on track to do even better numbers and should end up in the overall Top Ten as its run continues this year. But that was about it.
It’s funny because you would have thought it was the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 which would have been the worst years ever for Hollywood. And they were, but people have short memories. Let's just say this entire decade sucks, so far.
The dry spell over the last few months has resulted in a predictable order of finish to the box office race for 2023. In looking at the year-end ranking of which movies are on top, you could have probably used the same list from the end of this past summer, because not much has changed, really.
As of Jan. 8, here are the top domestic grosses of 2023 as compiled by Box Office Mojo. The overall winner for 2023 should surprise nobody:
Barbie. $636,228,022 WB
The Super Mario Bros. Movie. $574,934,330 Universal
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse $381,311,319 Columbia
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 $358,995,816 Disney
Oppenheimer $326,108,355 Universal
The Little Mermaid $298,172,056 Disney
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania $214,504,909 Disney
John Wick: Chapter 4 $187,131,806 Lions Gate
Sound of Freedom $184,178,046 Angel Studios
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour $179,877,605
That’s right, the winner of the 2023 box office race was Barbie, surpassing Super Mario Bros. by over $60 million. Worldwide, it tops $1.44 billion, compared to Super Mario’s $1.361 billion, Oppenheimer’s $952 million and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’s $845 million.
The monster July 21 opening weekend with Oppenheimer is still being talked about, with that weekend producing the largest domestic box office weekend of the year at $310 million. That’s not even counting the concession and popcorn sales.
You know, while everyone is going on about Barbieheimer and the rest, the under-reported story for me is how well Super Mario Bros. actually did. Given all the endless Barbie hype, Super Mario Bros. Movie was actually a very strong second. They darn near pulled off winning the box office race for the year after its spring release. Think of that.
So those are the winners, and what’s notable is what movies didn’t make the Top Ten. The two big surprises for me were Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny only making $174 million, and Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One making only $172 million. In fact, the performance of this latest Mission: Impossible movie was so underwhelming that word on the street is Paramount will go with a completely different name for the next one and will be junking the title “Dead Reckoning: Part II.” That is just hilarious.
Then you go right on down the line with the list of flops for the year — The Flash, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Blue Beetle, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, etc. — and another trend begins to emerge. Yes, folks, it finally appears as if people are finally, at long last, sending a message that they are fed up and bored to tears with the glut of superhero movies that are always served up year after year from Tinseltown. Enough of this stuff already.
And you know what? This is good news. If we get less of this formulaic stuff and more originality from Hollywood, the better off we all will be.
The obvious example that everyone points to as proof that the superhero genre is on its last legs is The Marvels. This latest Marvel feature starring Brie Larson reprising her Captain Marvel role was supposed to be a blockbuster, and supposed to dominate the November-December period for Disney, but it only opened to $46 million and has grossed only $84.5 million domestic. The general public looked at this production and went “meh!” It won’t make its money back in the end.
This has even wider ramifications for Disney because it seems obvious they can’t rely on their usual Marvel Studios movies to automatically be their meal ticket year in and year out. When you think of it, Disney is getting hit by all kinds of bad news at the moment, with Marvel movies underwhelming and with even their mascot Mickey Mouse going into the public domain (lol!).
Last year, Disney finally was toppled as the number one studio at the global box office. That title went to Universal, with $4.91 billion in grosses to Disney’s $4.83 billion.
Part of the reason Universal did so well was because of releases like Oppenheimer and Super Mario Bros. Movie, both of which were Top 5 for the year. But in general Universal hasn’t put all their eggs into one basket the way Disney has with their over-reliance on “franchise” movies, especially ones featuring these Marvel superheroes that everyone is sick of. The superheroes are in dire need of a timeout, as I have been saying for years now, and Disney needs to get back to the drawing board pronto.
And I say all this knowing how well Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse did, but that was Spider-Man, a top-tier superhero unlike most of this latest crop of second-raters being served up ( ie. Captain Marvel, Shazam!, The Flash, etc.), and it was animated and not live-action, and very different for that reason from the usual CGI extravaganzas we’ve come to expect. Again, originality is what the public seems to be responding to right now, and if you look at Barbie, at Oppenheimer and other movies that did well in 2023, the biggest winners were the movies that offered something distinct and different from what is usually served up by the studios every year.
That’s basically all I've got right now about the 2023 box office. See you in 2024!
