While the summer season is the box office’s most prolific and glamorous home, autumn is arguably the second most important season for the film industry.
The success and failures of 2024’s box office offerings have been relatively scattershot. Underdog movies rise to the top, while expected hits fall by the wayside, leaving many wondering if there is a shift in what consumers truly want from the current film landscape. Despite the confusion one thing is for sure, films with increasingly bloated budgets are consistently coming up short, while smaller budget outings are enjoying far more success than their big brother counterparts.
One of the first large releases this autumn has been “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.” The long awaited sequel to the 1988 classic “Beetlejuice” bursted into the box office with a $110 million dollar opening weekend, the third biggest opening of the year. Still within its theater run, the film has gained over $400 million dollars and counting.
This wild success was not expected by Warner Bros. Discovery executives, as the film was initially on a budget of around $150 million dollars before they slashed it down to roughly $99 million. Warner Bros. Discovery executives had little faith in the film, initially wanting to release it on streaming platforms, so they expressed that by lessening budgets. This case highlights a common theme of the recent box office landscape, that being: less is more. This would not be the last time Warner Bros. Discovery would miscalculate during autumn’s box office releases.
What may go down as one of the most high profile movie bombs of the decade, legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s long awaited, self financed neo-roman epic “Megalopolis” perplexed viewers and disappointed stakeholders upon its release. The film had been in development for decades, dating back to even the 1970’s. Murmurs about its grand scale, star-studded cast and unshakable vision from Coppola had been traded for years until its release, which audiences described as confounding at best and dismal at worst.
Its reception undoubtedly had a role in the film’s meager box office opening, earning just $6 million of its $120 million dollar budget. What should have been momentum within the coming weeks, was an unstoppable barrier, as the film is faring worse every week, so far only earning $9 million dollars of its pocket funded, sky high budget.
The animated features this season are very similar in ways, but also very distinct in not just their presentation, but current box office success. Two critically acclaimed films centering mechanical robots transforming and blossoming into who they are truly meant to be: Dreamworks’ “The Wild Robot” and Paramount’s “Transformers One” rolled out into theaters in late September, to much fanfare. Praising their mature yet accessible story-telling and character writing, both films have fought valiantly against each other. However, there is a close winner when it comes down to numbers.
“The Wild Robot,” on a budget of just $78 million dollars, opened to $35 million, stretching its legs all the way to $102 million worldwide in just a couple weeks. “Transformers One,” while stumbling out of the gate for “Transformers” standards, is not too far behind. On a budget of $75 million, “Transformers One” opened to $24 million. However, slowly but surely through word of mouth and release abroad, “Transformers One” has been steadily growing its worldwide gross, earning a big boost up to $97 million worldwide currently, anticipated to reach $100 million within the next week.
Two relatively smaller budget animated films with similar themes are experiencing profit due to its considerably lower threshold for financial success. For comparison, Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” had a budget of $200 million dollars. And while “Toy Story 4” was guaranteed to be a success, less likely animated features such as “The Wild Robot” and “Transformers One” are reinforcing the sentiment that once again, less is more.
The film with arguably the most eyes on it to release in autumn so far is Warner Bros. Discovery’s crime drama “Joker: Folie à Deux.” The sequel to 2019’s box office hit “Joker,” “Joker: Folie à Deux” has been faced with a meager $37 million dollar opening weekend, contrasted with its bloated budget of $200 million dollars.
Warner Bros. Discovery had an unshakable faith within “Joker: Folie à Deux” after its predecessor “Joker” opened to nearly $100 million dollars, eventually grossing over one billion dollars and becoming the first rated-R flick to reach one billion dollars in gross. A title “Joker” would hold for several years until being dethroned this summer by Marvel Studios’ “Deadpool and Wolverine” as the highest grossing rated R film.
This success led to Warner Bros. Discovery pumping millions more into the sequel. “Joker: Folie à Deux” has steadily climbed to around $115 million dollars in worldwide gross, which is not typically frowned upon. However, with the film’s towering budget and expectation, “Joker: Folie à Deux” may suffer both a critical and commercial loss by the end of its box office run.
It is a general rule that for a film to simply break even, it needs to gain two times its budget in order to account for marketing and other various costs. This means that “Joker: Folie à Deux” will have to gross at minimum $400 million dollars worldwide to begin enjoying any type of profit. This will undoubtedly be an uphill battle, as negative initial reception has slowed down its box office momentum drastically.
With the upcoming musical drama “Wicked” and its back-to-back filmed sequel being a combined $310 million dollars in budget and Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II” with a budget of roughly $200 million dollars, the repeated question is brought up once again: Are needlessly inflating budgets ruining the ability for a film to succeed?
As studios pour more money into a film, the hurdle for it to succeed becomes nearly unreachable, leading to film’s with critical success but just about average box office revenue’s to be deemed as failures. This ruins its theater run, sequel potential and grace from higher up executives.
The current model of “Blockbuster numbers or failure” is ruining film’s ability to thrive. Many of 2024’s box office successes have been from smaller budget films with a strong vision, with recent examples being “Alien: Romulus” and “The Substance,” along with films previously mentioned. This current unstable model could eventually lead to a tipping point, allowing studios to realize what many have already known, that less is more.