Movie Theaters Brace for Holiday Season Blues and More Delayed Blockbusters as Strike Drags On

Without Taylor Swift and Martin Scorsese, the October box office would have been a ghost town long before Halloween hit.

It was thanks to two unconventional releases Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour and Killers of the Flower Moon, one distributed by an exhibitor and the other backed by a major streaming service that anyone went to the movies at all.

It may get worse before it gets better. Hollywood hoped SAG-AFTRA and studios would resolve their contract negotiations by the end of October. But the strike drags on, preventing major stars from promoting their new films and adding to exhibitors anxieties about the upcoming holiday season.

The lack of any resolution in labor conflicts is bad news for movie theaters, says Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice Pro. The longer the strike goes on, we approach that worst-case scenario of impact. Some movies dont need actors to promote them, but smaller releases could benefit from having stars on the press circuit.

Overall, the domestic box office has generated $7.5 billion to date, which is 17.1% behind 2019 and 25.6% ahead of 2022, according to Comscore. Analysts project the year could wind up at around $9 billion, though reaching that benchmark will depend on the performance of the final few 2023 tentpoles. Already, B. Riley senior media analyst Eric Wold has revised down expectations for the fourth quarter. Thats mostly due to the high-profile delays of Dune: Part Two, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Kraven the Hunter.

Taylor Swift wasnt enough to offset the movies that moved, Wold says. Although Christmastime is without Avatar or Star Wars sequels to bring in families, he believes theres enough left on the calendar to keep multiplexes bustling from Thanksgiving to New Years. Its a decent mix of superheroes, young adult content and nostalgia to drive audiences, he says.

But theres a concerning absence of surefire hits on the horizon. Disneys The Marvels, the sequel to the billion-dollar blockbuster Captain Marvel, arrives in November and is tracking on the lower end for comic book adaptations. Adding to the uncertainty, it has a short window before The Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds Snakes makes its way to theaters around Thanksgiving. Then again, will moviegoers care about a Panem without Jennifer Lawrences Girl on Fire?

Theres an adage that moviegoing begets moviegoing, though exhibitors fear that some of these blockbuster hopefuls dont have enough of a runway beyond opening weekend. A similar pileup is cooking with family-friendly films around Turkey Day as Universal and Illumination deliver the threequel Trolls Band Together a week before Disneys latest animated musical, Wish. Fingers crossed for a We Dont Talk About Bruno-style earworm to inspire more than one trip to the movies.

The strike-related gaps on the calendar have prompted some top pop stars like Beyonc, whose Renaissance concert film lands on Dec. 1 to fill in the void. Even though few musical acts operate in the sphere of Swift and Queen Bey, analysts believe these movies could ignite a trend. Swifts Eras Tour is minting money, with $180 million worldwide and counting. However, concert films dont need to make anywhere near that much to justify their low costs.

Its been very clear for years that exhibitors need to step outside the box and find alternative content when studios arent putting out a tentpole, Robbins says. Whether it is COVID or the strikes, things keep delaying a consistent level of content hitting the big screen.

A few films are sticking to their original release strategy despite the unpredictability. Warner Bros. superhero sequel Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will attempt to buck this years string of DC flops, while Timothe Chalamets fantastical adventure Wonka, a feel-good film about the famous fictional chocolatier, may appeal to broader audiences. And theres The Color Purple, an adaptation of the Broadway musical that could hit all the right notes with young and old alike.

Box office watchers are optimistic that, unlike during COVID, there is an end in sight. And when the strike gets resolved, theres not the added pandemic-era pressure of convincing people its safe to go to the movies.

Now, it is going to be product-driven, says Chris Aronson, Paramounts president of domestic distribution.

Aronsons worried about a larger problem. Once Hollywood gets back to work, there will be a logjam of projects that need reshoots and other tinkering, stalled while actors and writers were picketing.

Then begins the Rubiks Cube of Where does talent go first? Where do crews go first? Are actors going to complete pickups of one movie before they go into production on another? Aronson says. Its going to be very complicated.

Several upcoming films may stumble in their race to get to the finish line. Paramounts action adventure Mission: Impossible 8 has already been pushed to 2025 and the post-strike scramble will likely force studios to postpone other 2024 summer blockbusters, like Disneys comic book tentpole Deadpool 3, that havent finished filming. That could create a domino effect of delays.

Among other possible tweaks: Warner Bros. is considering shifting around dates for next years titles, such as Wise Guys, a mob drama starring Robert De Niro, and Beetlejuice 2, the follow-up to Tim Burtons 1988 film about a pesky poltergeist. Sonys symbiote sequel Venom 3 and Universals disaster epic Twisters also face setbacks unless production can resume in the next few weeks.

There will be a number of 2024 titles that move into 2025 and beyond because of production delays, Wold says. Studios are holding back and not talking about it to avoid showing their weak hand during negotiations. But people are waiting for it.