US movie theaters on track for worst Memorial Day weekend since 1995

(CNN) — The summer movie season usually kicks off with a bang in May, especially Memorial Day weekend.

This year it’s a whimper.

Movie ticket sales were estimated at $128.3 million over Memorial Day weekend (Friday through Monday), according to Comscore data provided to CNN. That’s down from last year’s Memorial Day weekend, which had a gross of just $205 million, and ranks well below the record-setting holiday in 2013, when “Fast & Furious 6” generated grosses of $314.3 this weekend million dollars.

In fact, U.S. box office grosses are on track for the lowest-grossing Memorial Day weekend since “Casper” back in 1995, at $117.1 million – and that doesn’t even take into account inflation.

“There’s no way to sugarcoat it, the numbers coming out this weekend are nothing to write home about,” Paul Degarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, told CNN in an interview.

“Furiosa: The Mad Max Saga” is expected to be the No. 1 film with $32 million in weekend sales.

The summer Memorial Day weekend continues a lukewarm start to the summer movie season, which is still reeling from the fallout from last year’s Hollywood strikes.

Combined with production delays – aftershocks from months of Writers Guild strikes and SAG-AFTRA strikes still reverberating through the studios – a season that has historically drawn the largest theater audiences is off to a rocky start, which could hurt 2024 box office totals r.

“Summer is the most important cinema season of the year, generating on average almost 40% of total annual domestic revenues, so the summer goes by and the whole year goes by,” Dergarabedian said.

Last summer’s blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” brought in a combined nearly $1 billion at the domestic box office, according to Comscore data. This year, however, studios are banking on a wide range of mid-range sequels and prequels, as well as animated family films to fill the Barbenheimer-shaped gap, including “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and ” Inside Out 2″.

“Barring some major results, it looks like box office revenues for the May-August period of last year will be down 20-25% this summer,” said analyst Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of Box Office Theory.

While no Marvel movies or any Memorial Day mega-blockbusters premiered in May, there’s still a potentially solid slate of movies this year, Degarabarian said.

“Now we have to count on the movies coming out in June and July to really do well — and there are some really big ones on the horizon,” he said, noting “Despicable Me 4,” “Inside-Out 2” and “ Deadpool.” and Wolverine.”

The elusive $100 million opening weekend

By 2020, the period between Memorial Day weekend and Labor Day Monday will generate more than $4 billion in domestic revenues, according to Comscore data. The summer of 2023 was the first $4 billion summer since the pandemic.

Fueled by the success of “Sound of Freedom”, “Oppenheimer,” and “Barbie”’s record $155 million opening weekend in summer 2023, grossed $4.09 billion, up 19.2% from the previous year.

“Barbie” was distributed by Warner Bros., which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company.

Opening weekends exceeding $100 million are typically only seen in IP-driven action films like Star Wars and superhero movies, as well as animated family series like “The Incredibles 2” and “Finding Dory.” This year, no film exceeded this threshold.

“Barring a Marvel movie, which will deliver an opening weekend worth over $100 million, this summer will have to catch up in June and July to gain momentum,” Dergarabedian said, adding that this summer has been a “late bloomer” so far. “

Disney’s deals could make or break summer box office success

Two films that analysts say could cross the $100 million mark this summer are “Deadpool and Wolverine” and “Inside Out 2,” both distributed by Walt Disney Studios.

According to Daniel Loria, editorial director of Box Office Pro, which compiles sales and time-to-show dataS data from thousands of theaters across the United States. (Disney’s 20th Century Entertainment released its first film of the year, “The First Omen,” in April.)

“I can’t think of any other year where a studio that’s so important to this industry didn’t sit out the entire first half,” Loria told CNN, adding that this was largely due to production delays and schedule shifts caused by months. back and forth between studios, the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union. “We tend to overestimate the impact of the 2023 Hollywood labor strikes on ticket sales, but it’s hard not to cite that when you look at the number of major studio releases hitting theaters in the first half of the year.”

Disney did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.

Loria also emphasized that Disney’s summer offerings from both its Pixar and Marvel divisions will be crucial to overall box office performance in 2024.

According to Box Office Pro pre-sale data, “Inside Out 2” will premiere between $80 million and $100 million. Pixar’s offerings have declined in recent years; 2022’s “Lightyear” debuted domestically with $50.5 million, while 2023’s “Elemental” earned $29.6 million in its opening weekend.

Meanwhile, “Deadpool and Wolverine,” Marvel’s only release this year, is expected to revive audience enthusiasm after last November’s disappointment of “The Marvels,” which had a $47 million opening weekend.

Last week, ticket seller Fandango announced that “Deadpool and Wolverine” had broken the company’s 2024 record for best first-day ticket advance sales, beating out “Dune: Part Two.” The film also had the best first day of ticket sales for an R-rated film in Fandango’s 24-year history, the company told CNN.

“Deadpool & Wolverine has the potential to become the second film (after 2021’s Spiderman: No Way Home) to gross $200 million on its opening weekend in the post-pandemic era,” Loria said. “There are still two months until release, but if pre-sales and awareness continue at this pace, we believe the film could open in the range of $170 million to $210 million.”

“Despicable Me 4” and “Inside Out 2” “are looking particularly good, and “Deadpool and Wolverine” will certainly be the top movie this summer,” Dergarabedian said.

Studios are still trying to find their footing

Industry experts agree that ticket sales in 2024 are sluggish so far, however, it is hoped that ticket sales will rebound by the end of the year and beyond.

“Box revenues declined primarily due to significant variation between highly attractive premieres in the first half of the year,” Robbins said. “This is the status quo in the post-pandemic era for many reasons, most of them independent of theatrical exposure. The industry only had a short period between the effects of Covid production delays and then the writer and actor strikes last year.

Robbins added that there is still time for strong titles in the second half of the year to fill the gap, including September’s “Beetlejuice” and “Transformers One” and October’s “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

“Movie-going habits have changed dramatically since the pandemic, but we continue to see significant enthusiasm for the cinema experience,” Loria said. “The data clearly shows that audiences can still support the studio model, but identifying which movies will become blockbusters is still as difficult as ever to predict.”

Box Office Pro forecasts 2024 box office revenues of $8.2 billion, down about 10% from last year’s $9 billion. National earnings for 2023 were the highest since the pandemic, but it was still down about $2 billion from pre-pandemic annual sales, according to Comscore.

The-CNN-Wire