The summer box office season ended up being down 11 percent over 2023’s summer, and let’s not forget that 2023’s summer box office wasn’t all that hot.
The 2024 summer season (defined as May’s first weekend through Labor Day) saw a domestic box office gross of $3.6 billion. That is down 11 percent from 2023 and only a smidge higher (six percent) than 2022’s $3.39 billion summer box office gross.
The summers of 2020 and 2021 were lost due to the pandemic. So, going back to normal box office years, the 2024 summer box office is down a whopping 17 percent compared to 2019’s $4.32 billion and down 19 percent compared to summer 2018’s $4.41 billion.
That’s just the summer box office.
Year-to-date, the 2024 box office is still down 14 percent compared to 2023.
Nevertheless, Hollywood is relieved by these numbers. Why? Because summer started off with the year-to-date box office down 30 percent compared to 2023.
Also, movies that were expected to make money did indeed make money. After the franchise film Furiosa: A Mad Max Story collapsed into a pile of girlboss fail, there was serious concern that audiences just weren’t interested in the movies anymore.
What saved the summer?
Easy answer: movies for Normal People. No girlbosses (i.e. Furiosa), no gay sex, no woketardery. Many of these titles also prove that all the excuses for woke movies failing are pure lies.
- Bad Boys: Ride or Die made a mint and proves Americans hate woke, not movies starring black people.
- Inside Out 2 broke records and proved Americans hate woke, not movies starring girls.
- A Quiet Place: Day One cleaned up and proved Americans hate woke, not movies starring black women.
- Deadpool & Wolverine is anti-woke and is still minting money weeks after release.
- Twisters, Despicable Me 4, It Ends With Us, Alien: Romulus — bang, bang, bang, bang… All hits. All released without the studios pushing identity politics, gay sex, or any kind of political agenda.
Hell, the director behind Twisters came right out and said his movie was apolitical and not a screed about Global Warming or Climate Change. That was a very smart piece of marketing.
In other words, what saved Hollywood from what looked like a looming catastrophe in May was… Escapism! Entertainment! Laughs! Gee, what a shock. You mean what’s been drawing people to the movies for a hundred years still draws them? Who could’ve seen this coming?
Disney and Marvel had a dismal 2023. Everything either tanked or underperformed. It was all woke crap. In the summer of 2024, Disney and Marvel scored two of the year’s biggest hits — Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine. After three years of inserting homosexuality into its animated movies, the Disney Grooming Syndicate stopped and scored. After three years of woketardery, Marvel mocked the wokesters and scored.
Will Hollywood learn the real lesson of the silver lining in 2024’s summer’s box office numbers?
I sure hope not.
Die, Hollywood, die.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.