According to leading analytics firm Gower Street, global box office sales could now reach $32 billion by 2023 instead of the $29 billion projected.
The London-based outfit released its updated forecast on the eve of CinemaCon, the annual gathering of theater owners and Hollywood studios in Las Vegas. This year’s edition runs from April 24-27. Throughout the week, studios will discuss the ongoing box office recovery, celebrate their successes over the past year and tout their upcoming releases.
The mood at this year’s show is expected to be generally good. No one expects cinema attendance to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2024 or beyond, when there will be roughly the same number of releases as before, but there is steady progress. Global sales hovered around $26 billion in 2022, up 23 percent from the $21.3 billion in 2021 (and if Gower is right, this year will see another 23 percent increase).
But the recovery isn’t for the impatient — global box office revenue in 2022 was still 38 percent lower than the $42.3 billion in 2019, the last full year before the COVID-19 crisis hit.
Gower has revised his projection for 2023 upwards following the stunning performance of Illumination and Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. movie, which continues to break records three weeks after opening during the long Easter break. The Universal film is expected to close on Sunday with nearly $872 million in worldwide ticket sales, en route to becoming the first film of 2023 to cross the $1 billion mark worldwide.
SuperMario isn’t the only 2023 Hollywood title to flourish. John Wick: Chapter 4, Creed III And Scream VI have surpassed it all. And this weekend, Evil Dead Rise also has a promising start. Conversely, February Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania didn’t even clear $500 million in a rare miss for Marvel.
While domestic box office revenue fell short of Gower’s Q1 forecast, the combination of strong returns to date in Q2 and additions to the upcoming release calendar led the company to raise its full-year estimate by $400 million. increase to $9 billion. If domestic sales reached $9 billion, that would be a 20 percent gain from $7.5 billion in 2022, but a 34 percent decline from 2019.
Two of the additions to the calendar are a few event photos from Apple Original Films: Martin Scorsese’s Western crime drama Killers of the flower moon, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, and Robert De Niro; and Ridley Scott’s historical drama Napoleonstarring Joaquin Phoenix as the infamous Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Much to the delight of movie theater circuits, both Apple and Amazon Studios, which now owns MGM, have decided to give some of their movies a traditional theatrical release rather than sending titles to streaming almost immediately.
Apple and studio partner Paramount open Killers of the flower moon exclusive in theaters in October, while Apple and Sony will release Napoleon on November 22. Both will be rolled out globally.
Gower’s $32 billion global revenue forecast for 2023 includes $23 billion from the international box office, a spike of 25 percent from 2022’s $18.4 billion and 37 percent from 2021’s $16.8 billion.
China remains a wild card. While the box office there recovers from a disappointing 2022, Hollywood releases continue to struggle (the major exception being Avatar: the way of the water). Gower expects China’s box office revenue to reach $6.8 billion this year, compared to $4.3 billion in 2022.
