Our 2024 market forecast slips again, to $8.2 billion

The Summer season is looming on the horizon, and we could use some hits at the box office. The performance of films released in March and April was generally good, but delays to the release of several high-profile movies, and a lack of big new announcements for 2024 pushed our most recent market forecast for the year down a notch, from $8.3 billion to $8.2 billion.

Subscribe to The Numbers Business Report for an extended version of this report, delivered up to three weeks before we publish updates online, or read on for an overview of how our model thought the rest of 2024 will shape up in movie theaters, as of April 24…

The good news is that we added ten new wide releases to our release schedule over the previous month, thanks partly to Angel Studios and Crunchyroll nailing down some dates at their CinemaCon presentations. The biggest new announcement was for Here, which was one of the films we previewed in last month’s feature article in The Numbers Business Report on films we were hoping to see this year. The model is predicting it will earn a little over $50 million between its release at Thanksgiving and the end of the year.

The new announcements weren’t enough to offset the effects of films being bumped into 2025, which included Wolf Man (now set for January, 2025), Saw XI (pushed all the way back to September 26, 2025), and The Amateur, which is now dated for April 11 next year.

Our prediction for the year dipped down to $8.2 billion with this update. That’s not a huge change, but about $150 million of that total is dependent on some films being added to the release schedule during the Summer. They would need to be announced really soon at this point, and find a weekend without too much competition. Mid-July still has space for a couple more movies, and September is looking light. If something isn’t announced soon, our prediction will fall again in May.

One piece of good news is that our measure of market strength had moved back to 78% of the pre-pandemic level as of April 24, and has since increased into the mid-80s. That’s just a fraction behind our underlying assumption that, given the right movies, the market would be down 15% from its size before COVID. That improvement is not just because films like Godzilla x Kong and Civil War beat expectations, but also because Monkey Man didn’t miss expectations by too much.

Looking ahead, several films coming up in the next month are generating above-expected audience interest, including IF, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. If a couple of films break out in the next month, the prediction for the year could yet increase back towards the $8.5-billion level. Catching up with last year seems a distant prospect still, alas.

For more details on potential breakout hits, predictions for all movies through the end of 2024, and more, subscribe to our full report.

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com