As the box office struggles to recover from the global pandemic, analysts are forecasting more worldwide setbacks for the theatrical business in 2024.
The global box office hasn’t recovered from the global pandemic that shuttered cinemas across the world in 2020, but it has at least been on the uptick in the years since. Business isn’t back to 2019 pre-pandemic levels, but takings have at least improved steadily year on year.
According to predictions made this week, however, that slow progress won’t continue next year, with the impact of the Hollywood strikes set to cause a five percent dip in global box office revenue.
According to London-based firm Gower Street Analytics (via The Hollywood Reporter), total revenue is set to drop by a couple of billion dollars to $31.5bn. That prediction would place 2024 below the prediction for this year ($33.4bn) and a long way below the $42bn haul we saw in 2019.
A couple of billion dollars difference may not seem like too much in the grand scheme of things (although if anyone has a spare billion, do send it our way), but you only have to stop and reflect for a moment on the fragile health of the global theatrical business to realise that even at 2023 levels, the level of income isn’t sustainable.
We’ve seen the Empire chain of cinemas collapse this year (albeit part-rescued by Omniplex), the Cineworld chain continue to struggle out of Chapter 12 bankruptcy proceedings, while AMC, the biggest chain of cinemas on the planet, is having a pretty hard time of things too. Not to mention the struggling independents.
That couple of billion dollars, even divided globally, could make a considerable difference for some of these companies as they fight to stay afloat. In the US, box office next year is predicted to be 30 percent down on 2019, and given AMC’s struggles, we wonder if that might cause some serious problems for the country’s theatrical industry. Let’s hope not, but there will be some within the business bracing themselves for the worst given the bruising nature of the past few years.
In better news, the company did predict that 2025 would be a stronger year, although the firm didn’t put a dollar prediction on what we can expect.
This year’s box office takings are also set to be 29 percent higher than they were in 2022, despite lots of delays and high profile misfires such as The Flash and Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny. It’s a shame that the strikes are set to derail the progress that has been made since 2020, but let’s hope that the damage next year isn’t too severe for cinemas, wherever they may be.
