This archive report was first published on 22 December 2019.
Not Even 'Star Wars' Can Save This Year's Box Office ¶
LOS ANGELES — Movie ticket sales in the United States and Canada are expected to total $11.45 billion for the year, a 4 percent decrease from 2018, according to a preliminary estimate released by Comscore on Sunday.
The estimate took into account the $175.5 million collected by 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' (Disney) over the weekend. However, the film got off to a soft start compared to 'The Last Jedi,' which took in $220 million over its first few days in domestic theaters in 2017.
Despite the success of films like 'Avengers: Endgame' (Disney), which broke attendance records, and 'Joker' ($1.1 billion worldwide), the movie business is cyclical, and ending the year a few hundred million dollars behind 2018 is hardly a catastrophe.
Non-franchise films have to be definitive to compete in theaters, according to Joe Drake, the chairman of the Lionsgate Motion Picture Group. 'Knives Out,' starring Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas, was a perfectly executed example of the genre, but it was not a new or groundbreaking film.
Every studio ended the year with a few hits, including Warner, which struck a cultural nerve with 'Joker,' and Universal, which kept competitive with films like 'Us' ($255 million) and 'Hobbs & Shaw' ($759 million).
However, the box office is increasingly divided into haves — franchises, mostly aging ones — and have-nots (everything else). Studios churned out a whopping 58 franchise films this year, which consumed 82 percent of the worldwide Hollywood box office, according to David Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy.
