The Industry Had A Great Summer And On The Road To Recovery

Published Sep 7, 2022

Although our year-to-date numbers still linger at 70% of 2019, the big news is that thanks to an incredibly strong June (88%) and July (89%), the Memorial Day to Labor Day run tallied within 81% of 2019…unfortunately, August (57%) did let us down a bit.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget pain, so be mindful that (1) 2019 was the 2nd highest grossing year in industry history, so we are benchmarking against a pretty high mark and (2) this summer, even with its flaws, is 2.5x greater than 2021 and 2.9x greater than 2020.

The even bigger news is that the average opening weekend, for the 27 titles released during the summer, actually outgrossed the average weekend of the 43 titles released in 2019 by 24%.

Digging a little deeper, my math shows a little over 4% of that increase is due to a bump in average ticket price, leaving 19% of the difference due to increased attendance...that's right, increased attendance!

With 37% fewer titles to work with, the 2022 v 2019 comps could have been devastatingly worse...thank you moviegoers!

Driving this summer’s performance has been the amazing stamina of Top Gun: Maverick. The film opened to a respectable, but not by any means eyebrow-raising $125M weekend.

Little did we know at the time, the film would generate a 5.5x multiple, be the #1 film in the country over BOTH the Memorial Day AND Labor Day weekends, and easily slide into the #5 slot on the all-time list of highest grossing films.

Top Gun was joined by a strong supporting cast, including Jurassic World: Dominion, Minions: Rise of Gru and Thor: Love and Thunder, each generating over $330M this summer.

With three weeks to go, Q3’22 should total $2.0B, or 71% of the 2019 baseline.

Looking ahead, the Covid-related production and postponed release delays that have haunted us for the past 30 months, should be behind us and a normalized content release schedule should start to surface in Q4’22 and stabilize throughout 2023.

Led by exciting titles like, Lyle, Lyle Crocodile, Ticket to Paradise, Black Adam, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Strange World, Avatar: The Way of Water and Puss in Boots: Last Wish, my early look ahead for Q4’22 totals $2.2B, 77% vs 2019.

If true, totals for 2022 will fall just shy of $8.0B, a hard-fought 70% vs 2019…but least we forget, 1.7x and 3.5x greater than 2021 and 2020, respectively.