courtesy of Nintendo, Illumination Entertainment & Universal Pictures. godzilla: courtesy of Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Comics; Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Bros; Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures; Laura Radford/MARVEL; Melinda Sue Gordon/Apple TV+; Regal Cinemas/Courtesy Everett Collection; Courtesy of Warner Bros.; Courtesy of Marvel

One out of every five moviegoers has vanished since the pandemic, according to research compiled by one Hollywood studio. Whether they’ll ever return to see a film on the big screen is anyone’s guess — and, if they do, when.

It’s an alarming stat that offers some explanation as to why the box office turned on its head in 2023, leaving the film industry bewildered and befuddled. Superhero fare — the genre that helped prop up the business for well over a decade — no longer got a free pass as megabudget pics bombed, including The Flash and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, both from DC, and Marvel Studios’ The Marvels. 

“Audiences’ tastes are changing, and it feels like they want more challenging fare,” says chief Comscore box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian.

The existential crisis settled in for the long term when a pair of fresh, original summer movies — Barbie and Oppenheimer — outwitted everyone and transformed into the cultural phenomenon known as Barbenheimer. While Barbie is based on known IP, there were no guarantees that filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s fresh and irreverent take would work. Barbie is the first female-led, live-action movie to top the yearly global and domestic box office chart in modern times, with more than $1.44 billion in worldwide ticket sales, while Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer ranks third on the year’s top global earners with $952 million, a record for a biopic. The two movies made up nearly 10 percent of all domestic ticket sales, and nearly 29 percent of the top 10 grossing films, according to Comscore.

Around the same time as Barbenheimer, the conservative-skewing movie Sound of Freedom took off at the box office with virtually no warning and did more business domestically — $184.2 million — than tried-and-true franchise installments Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($174.5 million) and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One ($172 million). And in mid-October, Taylor Swift became another box office unicorn when her concert pic, The Eras Tour, grossed $179.6 million domestically and $250.3 million globally against a minuscule $15 million budget. Moreover, she bypassed Hollywood studios and instead asked AMC Theatres to distribute the film.

The family marketplace also remained incredibly fragile post-pandemic, particularly for original animated fare, such as Disney’s Wish or Illumination/Universal’s Migration. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, another Illumination/Universal title that’s based on the beloved video game, was a major exception to the animation downturn. Superhero fatigue and animation woes leave a void that no one is quite sure how to fill.

“Everything is so lopsided,” says Wall Street analyst Rich Greenfield of LightShed Ventures. “The number of big-budget movies in 2023 that didn’t make money felt like an all-time high. Consumer interest in moviegoing has been permanently altered. The question is, can theaters survive another horrific year?”

Notes a top studio executive: “We are definitely going through an evolution, and we can’t just keep cranking out the same old franchise fare. We have to do better. The ways we did things for decades don’t work anymore; now you have to hit the bull’s-eye or get close to it. And a lot of that has to do with the abundance of streaming product. When there’s a multitude of options for audiences to watch at home, there had better be a special reason to go to the theater.”

Some Wall Street analysts are confident the box office can weather the year’s changes, as well as a potentially tough 2024 with a lean release calendar because of strike-related delays. “We do believe the industry can overcome its near-term hurdles and should be well positioned for improved results in 2025-26,” says Eric Handler of Roth MKM Partners. 

Observers also note that domestic revenue was ultimately able to cross $9 billion in 2023 for the first time since the pandemic thanks to a diverse Christmas menu and better-than-expected performances from films including The Color Purple, Wonka and The Boys in the Boat. The tally isn’t entirely official yet, but Comscore is estimating a domestic haul of $9.05 billion, a 21 percent gain over 2022. However, that’s still down roughly 21 percent from 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

“The sure bets are no longer sure bets,” says Dergarabedian. “We’re living in a parallel universe.”

The traditional platform release for art house pics is once again showing signs of life — but with a twist.

In the heyday of the indie film boom, a platform release could allow a film to grow its footprint in cinemas over the course of many months without having to spend a fortune on advertising. Such a run usually begins in New York and Los Angeles; if a film is lucky, it will end up playing nationwide. But the traditional platform release was decimated by the pandemic, and streaming didn’t help either.

And yet the tactic is back, with a twist. After sending Wes Anderson’s new movie to the Cannes Film Festival in May, Focus chose to release Asteroid City in six theaters mid-June. The film scored an opening weekend average of $132,111 — the best showing since La La Land seven years earlier (this factoid made for many a headline). The next weekend, Focus expanded Asteroid City nationwide, or into more than 1,620 locations, in part because Focus wanted the title to be fresh in the minds of consumers when becoming available to rent on premium VOD after only three weeks.

A24, Searchlight and Neon are just a few of the other indie distributors playing around with a similar hybrid platform model whereby they go wide fairly quickly after starting off in only a handful of cinemas. For A24, it worked with Priscilla, while The Holdovers has done nicely by Focus.

“The one that brought back a lot of confidence for me was Asteroid City because it showed you can still do a movie like this theatrically,” says Focus chief of distribution Lisa Bunnell. “We are seeing a stronger marketplace now for specialty film, and I think you’re starting to get younger folks coming to the movies to see specialty film. It’s not just the established art crowd showing up now.”

MGM/Amazon theatrical distribution chief Kevin Wilson concurs. His 2023 slate included such platform releases as Saltburn and Bottoms (he’s also handling the specialty pic The Boys in the Boat, which did far better than expected when opening nationwide over Christmas). “I do think the adult audience is starting to come back to theaters in earnest. And I also think there’s a young cinephile audience out there that’s paying attention to movies like Saltburn or Poor Things [Searchlight] or Bottoms. It’s exciting to get this young audience excited about going to the movies for smaller films.”

After seven years, the Mouse House was dethroned by the Donna Langley-led studio in a close race for total receipts

Universal’s film empire is taking a bow after placing No. 1 in market share at the 2023 global box office, a feat no studio has been able to pull off since Disney rose to dominance in 2016.

The 24 movies released by Universal generated an estimated $4.91 billion in worldwide ticket sales, compared to an estimated $4.83 billion from the 17 titles released by Disney in what made for a relatively close race both in North America and at the foreign box office. Warner Bros. — home of Barbie, the year’s top earner with $1.44 billion in worldwide ticket sales — was No. 3 in global market share with $3.84 billion, including $1.43 billion domestically and $2.4 billion overseas. Sony came in No. 4 with $2.09 billion globally, including an early domestic estimate of $1.01 billion and $1.08 overseas.

The transfer of power is a big win for Donna Langley, who is chairman of NBCUniversal Studio Group and chief content officer. She is known for her close ties to top filmmakers, and had the necessary skills and standing to lure Christopher Nolan into the Universal fold when he grew dissatisfied with Warners after it announced plans to release its 2021 slate day-and-date on streaming. From 2016 to 2022, Disney placed first in global market share (it lost the domestic race to Sony in 2020, the year of the COVID-19 box office collapse). Universal hasn’t ranked No. 1 on a global basis since 2015, when its revenue reached $6.9 billion, but has consistently ranked high up on the market share chart. “In 2023, Universal once again found success at the box office with our eclectic slate of films,” says Jim Orr, president of domestic distribution.

Ceding the crown to Universal caps a difficult year for Disney, one in which Marvel and its animation studios stumbled badly. “Being the No. 1 studio globally for seven consecutive years out of the last eight is pretty remarkable by any measure and is something of which we are all incredibly proud,” says Tony Chambers, Disney’s chief of global distribution. 

Elsewhere, Lionsgate had a notable milestone to celebrate in that its movies generated north of $1 billion in global ticket sales for the first time in five years thanks to the successful runs of John Wick: Chapter 4, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the latest Saw franchise, among other titles. John Wick was a standout in particular, earning $440.1 million worldwide and north of $187 million domestically, the ninth-best showing of the year.

“The good news is that if the audience feels like there’s something fresh or exciting, they still love seeing movies in movie theaters,” says Lionsgate Motion Picture Group’s vice chair, Adam Fogelson. “There are definitely genres that are more challenged now than they have ever been, and that’s an issue. Whether a short-term trend or a long-term reality, it’s definitely going to require everyone to be hypervigilant about what we decide to make and at what price point.”

A version of this story appeared in the Jan. 4 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.