The latest industry financial forecasts have come in from accounting firm PwC, and their global box office predictions make for pretty mixed reading…
According to a report from accounting firm PwC, global box office grosses might finally breach pre-pandemic levels in 2026.
That sounds like good news. Since 2020, cinema revenue has been steadily creeping upwards as the Covid pandemic waned. Buoyed by $1billion grossing fare like Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick and Barbenheimer, the outlook in 2023 was far from ideal – but at least all the graphs were pointing in the right direction.
This year so far, however, things haven’t been looking so peachy. That’s why PwC – who conduct their Global Entertainment & Media Outlook annually – have updated their previous prediction that the box office would match 2019 levels in 2025.
This comes even after a period of above-average inflation across the globe. $1 from 2019 is worth $1.24 today. In the UK, the pound has suffered a remarkably similar fate. Cinema attendance in 2024 could be 19% lower than in 2019, and the accounts sheet should still read the same.
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Unfortunately for all involved, cinema attendance is not 19% lower than in 2019. In Europe, it was 24% lower in 2023, and after a year marked by declining Hollywood output, it doesn’t look like it’ll be creeping up anytime soon. In fact, PwC’s analysis doesn’t see cinema attendance reaching 2019 levels as far ahead as 2028 – the last year they looked at in their report.
In a very real sense, then, moviegoing culture is in pretty unpleasant territory. Sure, the industry can help line the pockets of the talented and valuable suits who move money around at the top of the chain, but when the purpose of your business is to show entertainment to people, and fewer people are watching your entertainment… Logically, financial growth seems like a pretty hollow victory.
So why has attendance plateaued? PwC’s Bart Spiegel blames “changes in consumer habits following the pandemic, the increasing popularity of streaming platforms, the impact of rising inflation, and audience fatigue with superhero movies.” There’s also the small matter that, after months of disruption caused by a combination of Covid and the Hollywood strikes, the major studios just aren’t making as many movies as they used to. Between 2023 and 2024, the number of films getting a wide cinema release (more than 1000 cinemas) in the US dropped from 124 to 107. It’s no wonder that revenues this year are set to drop for the first time year-on-year since 2020.
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As a result, it feels like the pressure on individual films to succeed financially has skyrocketed. Recent weeks have seen huge success stories in the forms of Inside Out 2 and Longlegs, but the outlook in the early summer was considered dead on arrival thanks, largely, to the underperformance of two films: The Fall Guy and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
Media reporting has some part to play in this, of course. We’ve written enough articles about the Ryan Gosling-induced death of the original blockbuster that we can hardly wash our hands of the whole thing by any means. But when there just aren’t the number of films, original or otherwise, to keep news outlets in print, a vacuum tends to emerge that “the death of cinema” fills very nicely.
It takes a real effort, then, to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. One or two genuine blockbusters, while great for cinemas in the short term (and based on the current rate of screen closures, that’s certainly still valuable), really aren’t likely to save the industry in isolation, just as one or two flops won’t sink it.
What really will save the industry, more than increasing box office returns, is bums on seats. PwC’s report might look like a light at the end of the tunnel for studios chasing profitability, but getting attendance back up to the consistently high level of the 2010s still needs to be a priority. There’s every chance that behavioural change means 2023’s figures represent the highest figure the current industry landscape will allow. Unless we want more expensive and increasingly empty cinemas, something needs to change sharpish.
