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The best movies of 2023, “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer,” and “Mario,” weren’t sequels or remakes.
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Meanwhile, Disney’s Marvel and DC saw some disappointing reps.
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The release dates of upcoming films also caused a change due to hit writers and actors.
Eight years ago, Steven Spielberg predicted that the superhero film would one day go “the way of the West.”
Spielberg’s comments sparked widespread outrage at the time. “Avengers: The Age of Ultron” was then one of the biggest films of the year. The following year would bring “Captain America: Civil War,” “Deadpool” and “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” The superhero movie was in high gear, and showed no signs of slowing down.
But Spielberg’s point was that nothing is forever in the movie business. These cycles, said Spielberg, “time is limited in popular culture.” And the maker of “ET,” “Jurassic Park” and “Jaws” might know a thing or two about the ebb and flow of pop culture taste.
As 2023 draws to a close, no one is sounding the death knell of the superhero movie. Walt Disney Co.’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” $845.6 million worldwide and Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($691 million) was one of the most popular films of the year. Marvel is still more powerful than any other brand in the business.
But more than ever, there are chinks in the armor of the superhero movie. Its dominance in popular culture is no longer so certain. A cycle may be turning, and a new one is dawning.
For the first time in more than two decades, the top three movies at the box office did not include a single sequel or remake: “Barbie,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Oppenheimer.” The last time it happened was in 2001, when “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” “Shrek” and “Monsters, Inc.” on top of the box office.
No, it’s not exactly a novelty lineup like, say, 1973, when “The Exorcist, “The Sting” and “American Graffiti” led all films in ticket sales. “Barbie” and “The Super Mario Bros ,” based on some of the world’s most recognizable brands, will spawn spinoffs and sequels of their own.
But it’s hard not to understand a change in filmmaking, a change that could be reversed for years to come for Hollywood.
“There’s an inflection point in 2023,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data company Comscore. “Barbenheimer is only one part of the story. Viewers, they want to be challenged. I think that the tried and true work is not necessary.”
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” from Warner Bros., was the breakout hit this year, with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales worldwide. It was a blockbuster like never before: an anarchic comedy that set a record string for a film directed by a woman.
The success of Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” a three-hour drama that grossed nearly $1 billion, was almost unprecedented. As different as it was from “Barbie”, they were all original feats of cinema and personal statements of their directors.
At the same time, Marvel left the Walt Disney Co., a hit machine like no other in the history of movies, like never before. “The Marvels” was a new low for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, grossing $200 million worldwide. In the midst of a revamp, DC Studios saw disappointing results for “The Flash” and “Blue Beetle” before watching “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” sink to a $28.1 million debut.
Marvel and DC have already taken steps to right their ships. Bob Iger, Disney’s chief executive, called Marvel his top priority. He said that the superhero studio has suffered greatly because of too many films and series that lead to “diluted quality.” Meanwhile, the James Gunn, DC directed by Peter Safran, will not officially launch until 2025 with “Superman Legacy.”
In the meantime, something else will have to fill the void. That was also a theme in 2023, when the writers and actors hit release plans and forced the delay of several films, including Warner’s “Dune: Part Two”, the next “Ghostbusters” film Sony’s and MGM’s “Challengers.”
Those disruptions will continue into 2024. Analysts don’t expect a bumper year for Hollywood in part because films like the next “Mission: Impossible” movie and the “Spider-Verse” sequel, which have delayed the strikes, will not make it. both on them. original dates.
Total ticket sales in US and Canadian theaters for 2023 are expected to reach about $9 billion, according to Comscore, an improvement of about 20% from 2022. The industry is still trying to regain its pre-pandemic base, when ticket sales regularly topped $11. billion. The output of broad issues in 2023 (88) still dwarfed those in 2019 (108) by 18.5%.
Hollywood is still luring filmmakers back to the theaters – something “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer” and “Mario” helped a lot.
“It reinforced something we’ve known for 100 years in the business: People like to go to the out-of-town shared experience,” says Jeffrey Goldstein, chief executive of Warner Bros. distribution. “They love to be entertained. offer and can bring in a huge audience.”
“It probably started with ‘Mario’ last April,” says Goldstein. “I think that showed audiences again that theaters are a fun place. And it showed studios and content creators: Up your game.”
If 2023 is any guide, hits will always come from unpredictable places.
That was the case with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” a film released just two months after Swift recorded concerts in a first-of-its-kind distribution deal with AMC Theaters. It grossed $250 million worldwide, and was followed by the similarly released sequel “Renaissance: A Film with Beyoncé.”
Another surprise was “Sound of Freedom,” a $15 million film from independent Angel Studios, which matched Swift’s $250 million worldwide. It was released with a unique “pay it forward” program that allowed people to donate tickets.
Going into 2023, no one was predicting that “Sound of Freedom” would succeed “The Marvels” or that “Five Nights at Freddy’s” would have a bigger opening weekend than “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny .”
“There will be examples of traditional big budgets that do well,” says Dergarabedian. “But for each of those, there have been two failures. An audience that is finding a lot of interesting content on streaming is becoming more open to movies like ‘Godzilla Minus One’, Indian cinema, Japanese anime. The audience is changing viewing. taste and studios have to get their hands on this.”
That creates as much of a challenge as an opportunity for studios. If more of the same movies no longer hold the same appeal, an industry that has for years relied on sequels, prequels, remakes and remakes to make most of its profits may need new creativity.
The West did not disappear all at once. After twenty years of ubiquity, it began to go out of style in the 1960s. And the West, of course, continues to be rich territory for filmmakers. This year, 81-year-old Martin Scorsese made his Western debut in “Killers of the Flower Moon,” the three-hour, $200 million epic from Apple Studios.
The superhero movie will never die. But his last days may have arrived.
Read the original article on Business Insider
