Movies in 2024: Lessons from a turbulent year at the box office

Movie ticket sales took a bit of a hit in 2024. The annual domestic box office is expected to end up at around $8.75 billion, down more than 3% from 2023, according to estimates from Comscore.

It’s not as dire as it was in the pandemic years, but it’s also not even close to the pre-pandemic norm when the annual box office regularly surpassed $11 billion.

This is the year the business felt the effects of the Hollywood strikes of 2023, the labor standoff that delayed productions and releases and led to a depleted calendar for exhibitors and moviegoers. And yet it’s not as bad as it could have been, or at least as bad as analysts projected at the start of the year.

“This has been a really incredible comeback story for the industry,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “Just a couple of months ago it was a question of whether we would even hit $8 billion for the year.”

Hollywood continues to learn lessons about what moviegoers really want, what works and what doesn’t. Here are the biggest takeaways from 2024.

The strike fallout was real

The Hollywood strikes might have ended in 2023, putting productions back into full swing and sending stars out on the promotional circuit again — but the ripple effect of the work stoppages and contract standoffs showed their real effects on the 2024 release calendar.

The first two quarters were hit hardest, with tentpoles pushed later in the year (“Deadpool & Wolverine,” for one) or even into 2025 (like “Mission: Impossible 8”). With no Marvel movie kicking off the summer moviegoing season, the box office was down a devastating 27.5% from 2023 right before “Inside Out 2” opened in June.

“It’s an unpredictable business but it thrives on stability,” Dergarabedian said. “When the release calendar is thrown off, the momentum stops.”

The PG rating (and animation) ruled

Sequels and franchises dominated the top 10 movies of the year, as has often been the case in the past 15 years. But this year, films carrying a PG rating did especially well, starting with the biggest movie of 2024: “Inside Out 2,” which also became the biggest animated movie of all time, not accounting for inflation.

Family films with a PG rating — including “Despicable Me 4,” “Moana 2,” “Wicked,” “Kung Fu Panda 4,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” “Mufasa” and “The Wild Robot” — grossed over $2.9 billion this year, accounting for around 33% of the annual box office, according to Comscore. Movies rated PG-13, by contrast, made up about 30% of ticket sales.

The Disney impact

After a quieter 2023 and several years without a film at the very top of the charts, the Walt Disney Co. came back roaring in 2024 with three of the top five movies of the year: “Inside Out 2,” “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Moana 2.” In mid-December, it crossed the $2 billion domestic mark, the second time any studio has done so since 2019 (that was also Disney, in 2022). Its 20th Century division also played an important part with “Alien: Romulus” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

“It’s a different industry when Disney commits to theatrical releases,” said Daniel Loria, an executive at the movie data and analytics trade The Boxoffice Company.

Looking at ‘flops’ a different way

Every year has high-profile flops and disappointments, and this was no exception. Sony had a rough go with its “Spider-Man” adjacent titles like “Madame Web” and “Kraven the Hunter” (but this also seems to be the fate lately for anyone not named “Deadpool”). Universal had higher hopes for “The Fall Guy,” as did Warner Bros. for “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and “Joker: Folie à Deux.”

Then there were the filmmaker-driven (and financed) passion projects that failed to take off like Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1” and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”

“It’s a reductive way of thinking about those passion projects,” Loria said. “Those movies didn’t come out with huge expectations, meaning theaters didn’t clear out the house and give them three auditoriums per site in hopes for money to come in.”

This was, however, part of the problem with “Joker 2,” which was expected to be more in line with the first which made over $1 billion. But even that has a caveat, Loria thinks.

“It wasn’t just that ‘Joker’ didn’t perform, it’s that there was nothing coming in behind it to make up that momentum,” Loria said. “That’s more the fault of a release schedule where one movie is supposed to carry a month. That model doesn’t work anymore.”

Audiences crave options and a diverse lineup

What does work, Loria said, is a diverse lineup, with the Thanksgiving and Christmas successes being the perfect example. At Thanksgiving, there was “Wicked,” “Gladiator II” and “Moana 2.” Christmas had “Mufasa,” “Sonic 3,” and a lot of adult offerings too, including “Nosferatu,” “A Complete Unknown” and “Babygirl.”

Horror is often the safest bet for theatrical, but this year had even veterans pleasantly surprised by just how enthusiastic that audience can be, with hits like “Longlegs,” “Nosferatu,” “Terrifier 3” and “Smile 2” getting people out of the house.

The Blake Lively drama “It Ends With Us,” which had its share of ongoing off-screen drama as well, also became an event. Audiences turned out for smart thrillers, like “Conclave” as well as unexpected originals including “Anora,” “The Substance” and “The Brutalist.”

Nostalgia and the allure of a re-release

Re-releases of movies in theaters that are also widely available in the home thrived this year. Some of the biggest successes included Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar,” “Coraline” and “The Phantom Menace.”

“It just shows our industry once again that audiences truly understand the difference between a communal, big screen theatrical experience that they crave even on films that they’ve had the opportunities to see in the home,” Nolan said in December. “That theatrical experience that we all know and love is so powerful and so exciting. It’s a very clear demonstration of it.”

Viral marketing moments

As silly as it sounds, this is the year the novelty popcorn bucket became a star. It started with the accidentally suggestive “Dune: Part 2” creation, which “Deadpool & Wolverine” latched onto in a less accidental way. More recently, the “Nosferatu” coffin buckets have been fetching high resale prices.

For Loria, it’s all part of a trend that theaters have been noticing since reopening during the pandemic: Moviegoers aren’t back in pre-pandemic numbers, but those who did come back were spending more on concessions and premium tickets (like IMAX and other large format screens) than ever before.

2025 looks bright

Everyone is optimistic for the film business in 2025, and the offerings for moviegoers — which include at least 110 films projected to open on over 2,000 screens — according to the National Association of Theatre Owners. And the momentum is there.

“There’s been a huge amount of box office generated in the last six weeks of the year,” Dergarabedian said. “This is the best opening act 2025 could have.”