A film industry analyst firm is forecasting the global box office market to sink to $31.5 billion in 2024.
According to a report by the London-based Gower Street Analytics, 2024’s global box office performance will fall approximately 5 percent below the firm’s 2023 global box office estimate at $33 billion.
“Given that we lost 50% of production time in 2023, the anticipated 5% year-on-year decrease in 2023 is not indicative of a declining interest in cinema, but simply a direct consequence of limited product availability,” Gower Street CEO Dimitrios Mitsinikos reported.
Rob Mitchell, director of Theatrical Insights at Gower Street Analytics, said the impact of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) writers’ and actors’ strike significantly hindered production.
In November, writers and actors with the SAG-AFTRA ended a 118-day strike that had halted production on numerous films and television shows.
The strike began in July with SAG-AFTRA members demanding higher salaries, increased revenue for the streaming services, and restrictions on the use of artificial intelligence in the place of real actors.
Most notably, Paramount stopped the release of “Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two,” which was scheduled to hit theaters on June 28, 2024. Instead, it is now scheduled to be released in May 2025.
“Captain America: Brave New World” was held back and is now scheduled to be released in May 2024, while two other Marvel films—“Avengers: Kang Dynasty” and “Avengers: Secret Wars”—have been delayed until the summers of 2026 and 2027, respectively.
The scheduled release of James Cameron’s “Avatar” sequels has been held back indefinitely.
Initially, “Avatar 3” was scheduled to be released in 2024, “Avatar 4” in 2026, and “Avatar 5” in 2028.
Television shows like HBO’s “The Last of Us” and Netflix’s “Stranger Things” have also been postponed, according to the Los Angeles Times.
“The International market is a bit less impacted by the limited release calendar caused by the Hollywood strike, compared to Domestic,” said Thomas Beraek, Gower Street’s chief analyst. “Local and international titles have more space to shine in each market when the supply of attractive U.S. products is shortened. This has been proven frequently since the pandemic disrupted both production and release cycles in 2020.”
Tom Cruise attends the Premiere of "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One," presented by Paramount Pictures and Skydance at Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, on July 10, 2023. Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
‘Slight Regression’
Mr. Mitchell said the strike is the “key driver” behind the “slight regression” of momentum in the recovery of the film industry that is striving to return to pre-pandemic numbers, a goal that now may be delayed until 2025.According to the firm, the $31.5 billion estimate falls 20 percent below the average of the pre-pandemic years from 2017 to 2019.
Despite this, Mr. Mitsinikos predicted 2025 to get better for film and television, projecting it to be a “positive trendsetter for the second half of this decade.”
Statista data states that individual film markets are going through different levels of recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic severely impacted the film industry.
The global box office revenue came to $21.3 billion, growing by 80 percent, according to Statista, which is “a little more than half” of what 2019 saw with $42.3 billion.
A marquee on a small town movie theater in the Midwest U.S. says closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in Greenville, Ill., on April 1, 2020. Laurie A. Smith/Shutterstock
Pandemic Impact on Global Ticket Sales
In 2020, global ticket sales plummeted 70 percent to $11.5 billion.In the United States, domestic box office sales fell 80 percent to an estimated $2.3 billion in 2020, giving China—for the first time in history—a $2.3 billion lead, even though its own domestic box office sales had sunk 70 percent from its 2019 amount at $9 billion, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Despite the struggle to return to pre-pandemic global box office numbers, Mr. Mitsinikos said there is an upside.
“In fact, as July 2023 marked a record-breaking month at the Global box office, we know that there is a robust audience demand for compelling theatrical releases,” he said.
