Summer 2024 box office: Winners ('Inside Out 2') and losers ('Furiosa')

At PJ Cinemas in Port Jefferson, where owner Phil Solomon paints portraits of customers and hangs them on his walls, something ominous is happening. When patrons pass away, Solomon says, he bequeaths their portraits to loved ones. And lately, the walls have more blank spots than usual.

"Our regulars, after the pandemic, have aged another five years and we’re losing them," Solomon says. He notes that business has picked up lately after a slow start to the year, and he remains "hopeful" about the coming months. But those blank spots worry him. "I need to fill them in," he says, "because it becomes a little depressing."

Everything seemed so sunny last summer, when "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" gave Hollywood a combined $2.4 billion windfall at the worldwide box office. One year later, the forecast is mixed. The summer started with a slump thanks to the big-budget dud "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" and an underwhelming "The Fall Guy." But then came bigger-than-expected hits like "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" and "Inside Out 2." And there could be more blockbusters to come, namely "Twisters" (which last week notched an $80 million domestic opening) and Marvel’s long-awaited "Deadpool & Wolverine" (out July 26).

"Going forward, does this mean there’s a corner-turn here?" says Jeremy Fuster, box office and labor reporter for TheWrap. "There’s still a lot of questions."

This year’s rocky start can be traced back to last year’s twin strikes in Hollywood, Fuster says. The Writers’ Guild struck from May through September, overlapped by the actors’ guild, SAG-AFTRA, which struck from July through November. The result was a roughly seven-month disruption to the film production pipeline and a spotty release schedule for the first half of this year.

"Deadpool & Wolverine," which halted production during the strikes, got bumped from its spot for the first Friday in May — an all-important weekend that heralds the start of summer and usually features a major Marvel title. Instead, the big movie for May 3 was "The Fall Guy," a Ryan Reynolds vehicle based on a 40-year-old television show, which wound up earning just $92 million domestically. May’s other big movie, "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," starring Anya Taylor-Joy as a post-apocalypse warrior, sank with $67 million domestically.

The studios "expected the first half of this year was going to be a bloodbath," Fuster says. And they were right: As of mid-July, domestic box office was down more than 17% compared with the same period in 2023, according to BoxOfficeMojo.

"But there was always this feeling," Fuster adds, that midway through summer "there was going to be the beginning of a turnaround."

That, too, is starting to look right. First came the June 7 release of "Bad Boys: Ride or Die," the fourth film in a franchise starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Miami cops. Any concerns that audiences might shun Smith after his infamous Oscar slap were quickly swept aside: The film earned a triumphant $388 million worldwide.

"I think people really underestimated ‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die,’" says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with Comscore. "Audiences, all they want to do is see something familiar with the stars they’ve come to know and love."

Another pleasant surprise: The June 14 release of "Inside Out 2," Disney-Pixar’s sequel to its 2015 hit "Inside Out." The story of emotions run amok in a teenager’s head — including Joy (Amy Poehler) and Anxiety (Maya Hawke) — "Inside Out 2” was expected to open strong with $80 million to $100 million domestically. In fact, it rocketed to $155 million and is now the year’s highest-grossing movie domestically (more than $600 million) as well as generating $1.4 billion worldwide (the most ever for an animated movie) — a massive number that suggests even moviegoers without children went to see it.

That was followed July 3 by another animated title, "Despicable Me 4," featuring Steve Carell as a supervillain who leads a pack of babbling Minions. Its worldwide total of $574 million globally has helped pushed the overall series past the $5 billion mark — a first for any animated franchise, according to Variety.

"Obviously, families are coming out in force," says Bruce Nash, founder and publisher of The Numbers. "Inside Out 2” is an example of "what you can get if you’ve got a film that appeals to a very broad audience," he says. “’Despicable Me 4’ is what happens when you hit that family audience perfectly."

But, he adds, "The weakness we’ve seen has been in the broader market."

Take "Fly Me to the Moon," a jaunty romcom set against the Space Race of the late 1960s. Starring Scarlett Johansson as a wily advertising exec and Channing Tatum as a by-the-book NASA staffer, the movie earned decent reviews and a respectable A- audience rating according to CinemaScore, the market research firm. Yet the film, with a reported budget of $100 million, has struggled at the box office, earning just $30 million worldwide since its July 12 release.

"It’s the only romantic comedy that’s going to get a wide release this year," says Nash, "which is insanity." The reason, he says, is that streaming platforms have become go-to destinations for romcoms and are attracting ever-bigger stars. (Witness Netflix’s "A Family Affair," featuring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron, which has reportedly drawn 28 million views since its debut on June 28.) "The studios have kind of given up and walked away from a big segment of the market," says Nash. (As it happens, "Fly Me to the Moon" is produced by Apple Studios; the distributor is Columbia Pictures).

As for Kevin Costner’s fizzled four-part Western, "Horizon: An American Saga," that may have been foreseeable. Westerns have been box office poison since at least the 1980s, despite rare exceptions like Costner's own "Dances with Wolves" from 1990, Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" (1993) and Quentin Tarantino's "Django Unchained" (still the director's highest-grossing film, from 2012). Nevertheless, Costner — riding the success of his popular "Yellowstone" series — sunk millions of his own dollars into making "Horizon" and partnered with New Line Cinema (through Warner Bros.) as a distributor.

"Chapter 1," released June 28, opened with a dismal $11 million domestically. Soon after, New Line Cinema and Costner’s Territory Pictures jointly announced that "Chapter 2” had been pulled from its Aug. 16 release date.

Mixed reviews and a lengthy running time probably helped sink "Horizon," according to Fuster. "I think they were banking on the people who watched ‘Yellowstone’ at home to go out and see a three-hour Western in a theater," he says. "And the conversion rate just wasn’t strong enough."

The summer’s next big hit could be "Deadpool & Wolverine," starring Ryan Reynolds as a sarcastic superhero and Hugh Jackman reprising his ferocious "X-Men" role. Two films in, the "Deadpool" series has proved wildly popular — each installment earned more than $780 million worldwide — and movie No. 3 looks poised to follow. A trailer for the R-rated film, posted in February, became the most viewed of all time, with 365 million views.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” got off to a supercharged start at the box office, breaking the Thursday preview record for an R-rated movie, according to The Associated Press. The comic-book film sold an estimated $38.5 million worth of movie tickets from preview screenings Thursday, Disney said Friday.

The previous R-rated record-holder was “Deadpool 2,” released by Fox’s 20th Century Studios in May of 2018. That made $18.6 million from Thursday previews.

"Deadpool & Wolverine" could benefit from pent-up demand: It’s this year’s only title from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It could also turn the tide for Marvel, which has suffered a string of recent disappointments. Last year’s "Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" was the lowest performer in the series (albeit with a sizable $476 million worldwide gross). "The Marvels" scored the MCU’s worst opening with $46 million domestically. And this year’s "Madame Web" (a Marvel-Sony title) opened even lower with just $15 million.

“’Deadpool’ operates in its own orbit — it doesn’t follow the same laws of gravity that the rest of the superhero movies do," says Dergarabedian. He points to estimates that "Deadpool & Wolverine" could open with as much as $200 million domestically, higher than last year’s megahit "Barbie."

"I don’t think there’s superhero fatigue," he says of Marvel’s misfires. "It was less-than-stellar-movie fatigue."

Are reports of the movies’ death greatly exaggerated, then? Nash predicts a $3.3 billion domestic haul for the summer overall — not bad, but a significant drop from last year’s $4 billion. Dergarabedian predicts a strong end to the year (among the marquee titles for fall: "Gladiator 2," "Joker: Folie à Deux" and "Wicked") but says overall domestic box office probably won’t match last year’s roughly $9 billion.

Still, as a 30-year veteran of the movie industry, Dergarabedian notes that every year comes with ups and downs — and much hand-wringing.

"If you pick a sliver of time and say it’s game over for the movie theaters," he says, "then you don’t know this business."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman