Summer Box Office Returns To Normalcy, Poised To Hit $4 Billion
22.08.2023 - 19:23
/ deadline.com
More pressure on the AMPTP and the guilds to come to terms: This summer’s domestic box office is set to cross $4 billion, for the 13th year ever.
The latest figures come from Comscore, and yes, we can give thanks to Barbenheimer which has a combined stateside take of $856M, repping 23% of the current running summer domestic B.O. of $3.797B.
Looking to get this summer across the $4 billion mark is Sony’s release of The Equalizer 3 which could ring up a 4-day opening of $40M over Labor Day weekend.
Currently, this summer’s ticket sales are pacing 17% ahead of last summer which minted $3.44 billion, a definite comeback from the pandemic’s 2020 closure, and studio’s largely abandonment of theatrical day and date releases, which were littered across summer 2021. This summer is currently pacing 5.3% behind 2019 which amounted to $4.3 billion.
The highest grossing summer ever for the May through Labor Day weekend period was 2013 which grossed $4.755 billion, led by Disney/Marvel Studio’s Iron Man 3 which did $409M. The summer box office has yet to gross $5 billion in a single season.
The summer season on average accounts for 40% of the annual box office year; still a prime time for the major studios.
Comscore Senior Media Analyst Paul Dergarabedian tells Deadline, “Summer is the roller-coaster season and the volatility created by a very small window of an 18-week corridor caused many to write off ’23 before the Barbenheimer phenomenon swooped in to add nearly $1B in domestic revenue to the hottest season’s bottom line.”
He further adds, “Quite an amazing summer for movie theaters after a three-year stretch of a down trending returns. This is clearly a positive result within the context of a very tumultuous period for the