Moviegoing in the United States and Canada has rebounded over the last two months. Theater owners credit a wider variety of releases.
The box office finally seems to be getting its groove back.
Over the weekend, six very different movies — a new feel-good family comedy, a new espionage epic, a bloody horror flick, a superhero spectacle, a Southern horror fantasia and a new rodeo drama — collected a combined $252 million in the United States and Canada. That figure is up from $92 million for the top six offerings on marquees a year ago, according to Comscore, which compiles ticketing data.
A box office turnaround started last month, when “A Minecraft Movie” arrived as a surprise sensation. (It’s now nearing $1 billion in global ticket sales.) Then came Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners,” which has blown past analyst expectations to collect $257 million to date ($339 million worldwide) and is still going strong.
All told, studios gave 20 movies a wide release (2,000 theaters or more) in April and May, a 25 percent increase from the same period a year ago. Notably, the No. 1 movie over the weekend was Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch” remake, which was initially planned as a straight-to-streaming project.
For theater owners, the two-month run of hits amounts to vindication. Moviegoing has struggled to regain its prepandemic verve, and the primary reason has involved “product,” cinema operators have insisted: To thrive, big screens need a steady flow of new movies, and those movies must come in a variety of flavors. Studios, however, have cut back on exclusive theatrical releases in recent years in a bid to build streaming services and to cope with the effects of lengthy strikes by writers and actors.
“Moviegoing is habitual,” said Greg Marcus, chief executive of the Marcus Corporation, which runs the fourth largest theater circuit in the United States. “You go one weekend and hopefully have a good time, and you see a trailer for what’s coming the next weekend, and you tell your friends.”
Yes, competition from streaming services has cut into their business, theater executives acknowledge. Yes, some multiplexes are dirty and need to be renovated. Yes, teenagers find it increasingly hard to keep their phones in their pockets for two or three whole hours.