Dinosaurs and superheroes return to rebuild summer movie box office
The handful of big-budget sequels will need to do the heavy lifting this summer as Hollywood is releasing fewer movies than a typical summer, the biggest season for moviegoing.
Tom Cruise is preparing to walk the red carpet at Cannes, tickets for Marvel’s next film are selling fast, and a new dinosaur adventure looms large on the summer movie schedule.
That gives movie theater operators hope that their business is finally heading toward normal as they meet with Hollywood studios this week in Las Vegas at the annual CinemaCon convention.
“Clearly we have reason for optimism,” Cineworld (CINE.L) Chief Executive Mooky Greidinger said in an interview, pointing to titles such as Jurassic World: Dominion and Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.
Cineworld, AMC Entertainment (AMC.N) and other theater operators were devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and are still working to get business back to the levels of a few years ago.
The handful of big-budget sequels will need to do the heavy lifting this summer as Hollywood is releasing fewer movies than a typical summer, the biggest season for moviegoing.
“This is more of a rebuild summer,” said Jeff Bock, senior media analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co. “It’s all about sequels and superheroes and dinosaurs.”
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Bock expects studios to release 40 percent fewer films than they did in the pre-pandemic summer of 2019, when 48 movies lit up screens from May through Labor Day in early September. That same period this year will feature 29 wide releases.
The decline is largely due to filming disruptions during the pandemic. Plus some genres, such as romantic comedies, are now more likely to head straight to streaming.
