Hopeful or Hopeless? Takeaways From 2024's Bleak Box Office Beginning

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by box office columnist and Puck contributor Scott Mendelson to discuss the historically bleak start to the year at the box office, filled with few tentpole releases and bombs from movies like ‘Argylle.’ They preview the rest of the year’s movie slate, discuss whether movies like 'Dune: Part Two' can outperform the limitations of their genre, offer up some potential wild-card hits, and wonder whether the lack of major franchise releases in 2024 will boost original and original-ish movies like Ryan Gosling's ‘The Fall Guy.’ Matt finishes the show by giving a box office prediction for the upcoming film ‘Madame Web.’ For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Scott Mendelson Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	There are a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL draft this year.
0:04.0	My name is Ben Solac and I host the Ringer NFL Draft Show with Danny Kelly, Danny Hypatts, and Craig Horleck.
0:08.8	We cover trades, free agency, and the draft, which is, yeah, obviously.
0:12.2	We'll tell you about everything, which includes which quarterbacks are good,
0:14.5	which quarterbacks are bad, and which quarterbacks are just Kirk Cousins.
0:17.2	That is the Ringer NFL draft show. Search the bringer NFL draft show on Spotify.
0:24.0	It is Wednesday, February 14th.
0:27.3	Heading into 2024, we knew the first couple months would be rough at the box office.
0:32.2	Last year, strikes pushed a bunch of movies, and even before the strike, there was nothing on the calendar from Marvel or DC or really any big global franchise until March when Dune 2 and Kung Fu Panda
0:43.9	4 arrived and nothing massive like Avatar 2 or Spider-Man far from home to spill into January and
0:50.6	February. But man, it's even worse than the predictions. Total box office through
0:55.7	half of February is at about 87% of last year, according to the Screen Dollars newsletter.
1:01.2	And last year wasn't huge. And it's only about 65% of 2019 numbers. That is a big yikes.
1:08.2	Those comparisons are likely to get worse after this President's Day weekend. There's
1:12.3	usually a big tent pole for the holiday like last year's Ant Man 3, which opened to 106 million domestic.
1:18.4	This year, there's a Bob Marley biopic, and then there's Madam Webb, which, no surprise,
1:23.4	is getting eviscerated by critics, even for a Sony Marvel movie, which are usually bad.
1:28.7	Depressing all around for the movie studios, and there's not a lot of optimism that things will turn around that much during the rest of the year.
1:35.4	It's both the number of movies in 2023. There were 124 wide theatrical releases, meaning they opened in 1,000-plus theaters.
1:46.1	This year, they're about 10% fewer,
1:51.3	at least according to the schedule today. And the quality of the movies as well. I don't mean whether they're good or bad. I mean whether they are proven franchises or not. Only one Marvel
1:56.6	movie in Deadpool and Wolverine, and no DC movies except Joker 2 in the fall. But there are tons
	...

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