Will There Be Enough Box Office Hits This Fall to Top Last Year, Let Alone 2019?

Hollywood, which has faced plenty of highs and lows in its struggle to rebuild the box office after a long pandemic shutdown, faces new challenges as it heads into the last four months of the year: a shortage of wide-release studio movies to lure moviegoers back into theaters.

According to the box office database The Numbers, there are 34 wide releases scheduled to open between September and December this year — not only is that well under the 47 that opened in pre-pandemic 2019 but it’s also below the 42 wide releases that opened last year in the same period.

That may make it difficult to match the $2.36 billion domestic box office for the last four months of 2021. (In 2019, ticket sales in that period hit $3.58 billion.) Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” alone accounted for a quarter of that September-to-December haul last year, while seven other films contributed at least $100 million each (including Disney/Marvel’s “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” and MGM’s “No Time to Die”).

This year, Disney’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” will combine forces to match or perhaps even exceed the total of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” but will there be enough $100 million-plus grossers to bolster the box office?

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“There are fewer films this year, but the tentpoles we are getting to end the year are so strong that they can generate a larger atmosphere for moviegoing,” Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock told TheWrap, noting that franchise tentpoles create a trickle-down effect that will elevate the films surrounding it on the slate. (This past summer, Warner Bros.’ “Elvis” reached $150 million thanks in part to buzz created among moviegoers who saw its trailer ahead of Paramount’s megahit “Top Gun: Maverick.”)

Bock predicts that this fall’s major releases will give each other a boost and help get Americans back in the moviegoing habit. “There are going to be a lot of people seeing trailers before ‘Black Adam’ and ‘Wakanda Forever,’ and that is going to generate a lot more interest in the wider slate to come,” he said.

So where and when might theaters find films that can provide the secondary level of support that the box office needs? Let’s break it down month by month.

September

In recent years, September has broken out of its historical trend of being a slow month for the box office, with Warner Bros. and New Line earning big bucks with “The Nun” and the two “It” films between 2017 and 2019. Last year, despite pandemic restrictions in many parts of the country, Marvel set a Labor Day weekend record with “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” — which debuted to $94.6 million over the four-day weekend on its way to $224.5 million domestically.

But there isn’t anything on that level coming out this month.

The most high-profile film on the September slate is Warner Bros.’ “Don’t Worry Darling,” Olivia Wilde’s 1950s-set psychological thriller starring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles. Unfortunately, this film has become high-profile for all the wrong reasons thanks to its turbulent premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Along with mixed-to-negative reviews — it currently has a 41% Rotten Tomatoes score — the social media buzz surrounding “Don’t Worry Darling” has been more about behind-the-scenes issues like Pugh’s absence from the upcoming press tour, and there’s no guarantee that such celebrity gossip will actually translate into ticket sales.

Perhaps some modest box office support will come elsewhere. In the latter half of September, Billy Eichner and Universal’s “Bros” will make film history as the first LGBTQ rom-com from a major studio, while Sony will release Gina Prince-Bythewood’s “The Woman King” featuring Viola Davis in a historical biopic that has been praised as a crowd-pleaser by critics at TIFF.

“Bros” and “Woman King” could find traction with LGBTQ and Black moviegoers, respectively, and help bump up box office numbers after an extremely sluggish end-of-year period. But no September release is poised to gross more than $100 million domestic.

October

The first surefire $100 million-plus release in three months will likely be Warner Bros.’ “Black Adam,” whose star Dwayne Johnson is promising will change the hierarchy of the DC Universe forever. Warner would probably just be content with the film changing the air of misery currently hanging over the DC franchise.

Despite the critical acclaim and $770 million global box office run of “The Batman” earlier this year, DC Films has faced one embarrassing headline after another, from a poorly received Comic-Con presentation to the sudden cancellation of the HBO Max film “Batgirl” to the no-win situation that Warner faces when it comes to releasing “The Flash” next year in the face of Ezra Miller’s unending run-ins with the law. So “Black Adam” must find a way to attract audiences for a lesser-known DC antihero at a time when audience goodwill in the franchise is low.

But “Black Adam” is the only sure bet next month — one year after the studios managed to generate four box office successes. Sony’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” scared up $212.6 million, MGM’s James Bond chased down $160.7 million domestically for “No Time to Die” and Timothée Chalamet led fans through the deserts of “Dune” to the tune of $108.3 million.

After “Black Adam,” there are two other films opening next month that have a puncher’s chance at a $100 million-plus domestic run. One is Universal’s “Halloween Ends,” which Jamie Lee Curtis says will be her seventh and final performance as the slasher survivor Laurie Strode. Last year’s tepidly reviewed “Halloween Kills” topped out at $92 million, less than the $159 million domestic total of the first “Halloween” revival in 2018. And the new outing will also have to convince casual audiences that it’s worth seeing in theaters rather than on Peacock, where it will begin streaming on opening day.

The other contender is Sony’s “Lyle Lyle Crocodile,” which hits theaters Oct. 7 and will be the first wide release family film to hit theaters since “Paws of Fury” in mid-July. While the film isn’t based on a well-known franchise like “Minions: The Rise of Gru,” Bock noted that Sony has found success with family films like “Peter Rabbit,” which grossed $115 million domestic in 2018.

“Sony has found a way to make these smaller family films overperform, and there’s not going to be any other major family film on the fall slate until Thanksgiving, so it will have parents and kids largely to themselves,” Bock said.

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November

The date that every theater owner in America is circling is Nov. 11, because that’s when Disney/Marvel’s long-awaited “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” arrives in theaters. There’s already plenty of interest in the sequel to Marvel’s first Best Picture Oscar nominee following the death of lead star Chadwick Boseman, and the buzz spiked even further after the release of the film’s well-received teaser trailer at Comic-Con, which according to Disney nabbed 172 million views in its first 24 hours.

If fans embrace “Wakanda Forever” as much as they did “Black Panther” despite Boseman’s absence, the box office could see another “Top Gun: Maverick”-esque run that continues for months even with the heavy holiday competition. And the film should dwarf last November’s two blockbusters, Marvel’s tepidly received “Eternals” ($164.9 million) and Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” (129.4 million).

But even a heavyweight like “Wakanda Forever” can’t carry the theatrical market alone. One film that could get a big Wakanda bump is “Strange World,” the latest Disney animated film to get a Thanksgiving release. Disney hasn’t indicated if it will give this film a 30-day exclusive theatrical window as it did for “Encanto.” But “Strange World” could easily beat the $96 million domestic run that “Encanto” had last year as families have returned in significant numbers over the past year.

The wild cards of November is Steven Spielberg’s semiautobiographical “The Fabelmans” and Maria Schrader’s “She Said,” which will be the most high-profile offerings for moviegoers looking for a mature drama or a potential awards contender. “The Fabelmans” will get a limited release in Los Angeles and New York the same weekend as “Wakanda Forever” before going wide on Thanksgiving weekend.

Prior to the pandemic, theaters could count on at least one film turning festival acclaim into a strong box office run. But that’s been called into question by the abysmal performance of last year’s Oscar nominees — including Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story.” This fall and winter will go a long way in telling us whether such mature fare still has a theatrical future and whether they can be counted on to make people who aren’t interested in blockbusters into regular moviegoers again.

December

Finally, the year closes out with the most unpredictable title of 2022: “Avatar: The Way of Water.” After 13 years, James Cameron is finally ready to release the sequel to the highest grossing film in box office history. We know it will do well. We just don’t know how well. Despite the doubters and endless “Pocahontas” comparisons, there’s no denying that “Avatar” still has global appeal, earning wild cheers at the Rex Theater in Paris when the teaser trailer was screened ahead of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” back in May.

With a release expected in China — a rarity for Hollywood films these days — you’d be hard-pressed to find an analyst or movie exec that isn’t setting $1 billion as the floor for “Avatar 2.” Whether it can top $2 billion or even reach the $2.7 billion worldwide gross of its predecessor will depend on whether it can replicate the desire among moviegoers to see Pandora on the big screen again, giving it legs even in a film market that, unlike in 2009, is releasing tentpole films like Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” in February.

And “Avatar” won’t have the wide release market to itself. Other studios are putting out their own big titles. Universal is catering to family audiences with “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” while Sony will try to win over Whitney Houston’s devoted fans with the biopic “I Wanna Dance With Somebody.” Both could find success as counterprogramming to the four-quadrant blockbuster. Last December’s animated sequel “Sing 2” made $160 million last year, after all, and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” could become a sleeper hit in the vein of this summer’s “Elvis.”

One film that won’t be on the holiday slate is Warner’s DC sequel “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” which got yet another release date shift to March 2023. While that move will give “Shazam 2” premium format support, it is one less four-quadrant title on offer for theaters during the holidays. That could clear the path for “Avatar: The Way of Water” to deliver the sort of holiday riches that “Star Wars” and “Jumanji” delivered in the years prior to the pandemic. If Cameron’s track record is any indication, he should deliver.

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