2023 Box Office Recap
Happy New Year!
Larry David’s New Year “rule” be damned.
With 2023 behind us and the 2024 movie slate ahead, I thought it would be best to review what I felt were the biggest highlights of last year’s box office. Below you’ll find a list of my top 5 key takeaways which are mostly domestic focused, based on data that I pulled from the fantastic movie information site the-numbers.com. Enjoy!
2023 was the year where…
The world shouted “Hi Barbie!”
Barbie was the number one film of 2023 both domestically and worldwide, racking up $636M in the states and $1.4B globally. Adjusted for inflation, that makes Barbie the 39th highest grossing film domestically of all-time!
Note: Even though Puss in Boots was released in 2022, I decided to count it as a 2023 release since it was released after December 20th
Note: Rankings based on all films released domestically since 1977
And it looks like Barbie won’t be parent company Mattel’s only foray into bringing a beloved toy to the big screen either, since the company already has 14 more toy-based movies planned. Perhaps the term “MCU” will stand for something else in the near future.
2. A low-budget movie struck big
In my top 10 domestic chart above, you will see the film Sound of Freedom at number 10. Distributed by Angel Studios, the movie tells the story of a former government agent turned vigilante who embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue children from traffickers.
Now, there’s a fair amount of controversy surrounding the film (there are claims that it shows misleading depictions of child exploitation and appears to play into QAnon theories, to name a few critiques), but I won’t get into that here. Instead I’ll just stick to the numbers: on a reported budget of $14.5M, Sound of Freedom made $184M domestically and $250M globally. This represents a 17.3X return-on-investment (ROI), the best ROI out of any 2023 film produced in the U.S..
Notes:
(1) Per the-numbers.com: “Budget numbers for movies can be both difficult to find and unreliable. Studios often try to keep the information secret and will use accounting tricks to inflate or reduce announced budgets.”
(2) Rankings are based only on films produced in the U.S. whose production budgets have been revealed
3. Universal reigned supreme
Another major winner of 2023 was Universal. The studio distributed 3 of the top 10 films both domestically (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Oppenheimer, Puss in Boots) and globally (same movies as before, only swap out Puss in Boots for Fast X). This feat, along with strong performances amongst its other films, enabled Universal to earn the 2nd highest domestic gross of the year at $1.8B, and the highest global gross of the year at $4.6B.
Note: Disney’s share of the domestic box office is inclusive of the 5% box office share that its subsidiary, 20th Century Studios, represented. If we ignored 20th Century Studios’ share - largely driven by earnings from Avatar: The Way of Water - Universal would be ranked number one.
Note: Since the-numbers.com doesn’t provide a worldwide ranking for 2023 distributors, I based this list by summing all the box office revenue collected by movies released between December 20, 2022 and December 20, 2023, per distributor. This list may not be entirely accurate, but I would say it’s fairly close.
4. Superheroes failed to save the day
It seems like the “death” of the superhero genre has been incorrectly predicted time after time after time. However, it’s clear that 2023 wasn’t the best year for caped crusaders. Superhero films raked in just $1.4B last year, a year-over-year decline of 24% which also – excluding 2020 – represents a 5-year low. As a result, superhero films accounted for just over 17% of the 2023 domestic box office, marking another 5-year low - again excluding 2020.
Notes:
(1) Annual box office revenues adjusted for inflation
(2) I decided to not show returns for 2020 since the box office that year was practically non-existent
(3) Although decline from 2019 to 2021 was significant, this is almost entirely reflective of the gradual revival of the theatrical market from 2020 lows
(4) The numbers I report are a little different from the numbers shown on the-numbers.com; here, I capture all of a movie’s earnings within the year of its release, rather than split out earnings over the years a movie may have been generating money
5. Swifties and the BeyHive showed UP
Outside of headlining a financial behemoth of a tour and being named Time’s Person of the Year, Taylor Swift can now add having the highest-grossing concert / performance film of all-time to her incredible list of accomplishments. Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour earned a record-breaking domestic gross of $180M and global gross of just over $250M. Beyoncé also had a strong box office year, with Renaissance bringing in $34M stateside to become the 12th highest domestic grossing concert/performance film of all-time, and earning $44M worldwide.
Note: Only domestic box office revenues are inflation-adjusted
The third major winner here was AMC Studios, who served as the distributor for both films – thanks to a recent tweak to antitrust law. As a result, the studio had the 8th largest share of the domestic box office (see takeaway 3 above) and earned just under $300M worldwide.
Looking ahead
And that’s the 2023 box office in a nutshell. Looking forward to seeing what great, surprising, disappointing, disturbing, dramatic, and / or laughably awful films await us this year!