Was 2023 a tipping point for movies?
As 2023 draws to a close, no one is sounding the death knell of the superhero movie. The Walt Disney Co.'s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” made $845.6 million worldwide and Sony's “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($691 million) was one of the most acclaimed films of the year. Marvel is still mightier than any other brand in the business.
But more than ever before, there are chinks in the armor of the superhero movie. Its dominance in popular culture is no longer quite so assured. A cycle may be turning, and a new one dawning.
For the first time in more than two decades, the top three movies at the box office didn’t include one sequel or remake: “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Oppenheimer.” The last time that happened was 2001, when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “Shrek” and “Monsters, Inc.” topped the box office.
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” from Warner Bros., was the year’s runaway hit, with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales worldwide. It was a blockbuster like none seen before: an anarchic comedy that set a string of records for a movie directed by a woman.
Nearly as unprecedented was the success of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour drama that nearly grossed $1 billion. As different as it and “Barbie” were, they were each original feats of cinema and personal statements by its directors.
At the same time, the Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel, a hit-making machine like none other in movie history, faltered like never before. “The Marvels” marked a new low for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, collecting $200 million globally. DC Studios, in the midst of a revamp, saw disappointing results for “The Flash” and “Blue Beetle” before watching “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” sink to a $28.1 million debut.
Both Marvel and DC have already made moves to right their ships. Bob Iger, Disney's chief executive, has called turning around Marvel his top priority. He said the superhero studio has suffered greatly from too many films and series leading to “diluted quality.” The James Gunn, Peter Safran-led DC, meanwhile, won’t officially launch until 2025 with “Superman Legacy.”
In the meantime, something else will have to fill the void. That was a theme in 2023, too, when the writers and actors strikes marred release plans and forced the delay of several films including Warner’s “Dune: Part Two,” Sony’s next “Ghostbusters” movie and MGM’s “Challengers.”
Those disruptions will continue in 2024. Analysts aren't expecting a banner year for Hollywood in part because films like the next “Mission: Impossible” film and the “Spider-Verse” sequel, both delayed by the strikes, won’t make their original dates.
Overall ticket sales in U.S. and Canadian theaters for 2023 are expected to reach about $9 billion, according to Comscore, an improvement of about 20 percent from 2022. The industry is still trying to regain its pre-pandemic footing, when ticket sales regularly surpassed $11 billion. Output of wide-releases in 2023 (88) still trailed those in 2019 (108) by 18.5 percent.
If 2023 is any guide, hits will come from increasingly unpredictable places. That was the case with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” a film released just two months after Swift’s recorded concerts in a first-of-its-kind distribution deal with AMC Theaters. It grossed $250 million worldwide, and was followed by the similarly released “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé,” another No. 1 debut.
More surprising was “Sound of Freedom,” a $15 million film from the independent Angel Studios, which matched Swift with $250 million worldwide. It was released with a unique “pay it forward” program that allowed people to donate tickets.
Going into 2023, no one was betting “Sound of Freedom” would outgross “The Marvels” or that “Five Nights at Freddy's" would have a bigger opening weekend than “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”
The Western didn't vanish all at once. After two decades of ubiquity, it began going out of style in the 1960s. And the Western, of course, continues to be rich territory for filmmakers. This year, 81-year-old Martin Scorsese made his first Western in “Killers of the Flower Moon," the three-hour-plus $200 million epic from Apple Studios.
The superhero movie, likewise, won't ever die. But its heyday might have reached its endgame.