Healing process
While Zuckerberg’s been focussed on his “year of efficiency”, Hollywood’s started another year in recovery mode, though things are looking a little brighter at the box office as takings gradually edge closer to pre-pandemic levels.
Indeed, with the number of wide releases set to increase across the board this year, plus Apple and Amazon announcing plans to spend $1 billion each to boost their respective theatrical release rosters, the fortunes of the silver screen may finally be turning for good.
March movie madness
With Creed III, Scream VI, Shazam: Fury of the Gods, and John Wick: Chapter 4, March has certainly been littered with mass-appeal movies — so much so that box office analysts have compared the slate to pre-Covid release schedules. The slew of sequels won’t help dispel the theory that Hollywood’s low on original ideas, but they have been instrumental in getting this year’s box office off to the best start since 2020.
Data from Box Office Mojo shows that US theaters took in $563 million in March, contributing to the $1.65 billion total grossed in 2023 so far. Though that’s down from the 2005-2019 figures for the same period — which never dropped below the $2 billion threshold — it’s still a marked improvement on 2022’s tally, when domestic box office takings sat at $1.34 billion.
