Australian cinema operators optimistic after wild 2024 box office

It started off so terribly.

As June ticked over, the 2024 Australian box office was a disaster.

Highly anticipated blockbusters like the Anya Taylor-Joy-helmed Mad Max: Furiosa and the Ryan Gosling-led Fall Guy flopped, leaving cinema operators from Los Angeles to rural Australia with empty seats and a bubbling sense of panic.

Stephen Goddard, the manager of a three-screen cinema in the coal mining town of Emerald in central Queensland, told NewsWire at the time that he wouldn’t make it to December.

But at that very moment, as the US summer months kicked off, the monsters started rolling in, one after the other.

Disney’s Inside Out 2 was the first megahit, collecting a mammoth $2.6bn at the global box office, including $55.5m in Australia.

And then Universal’s Despicable Me 4 took in $1.6bn across the world, including $43.2m in Australia.

On the heels of those two family-friendly behemoths followed another monster: the R-rated Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds cash cow Deadpool and Wolverine, which collected more than $2bn worldwide, including $67.8m in Australia.

Later in the year, “Glicked” came through for Aussie cinema operators.

A play on the Barbenheimer portmanteau, the pairing of Wicked with Gladiator 2 fetched about $13m domestically across the November 21 opening weekend.

The following week, the “moanapocalypse” hit, with Disney’s Moana 2 collecting a mammoth US$389 worldwide across the Thanksgiving weekend, including $15m in Australia.

In 2023, the Australian box office collected $994m in ticket sales from January to December.

By November this year, the box office had reached $811m.

But with Glicked, Moana 2 and the arrival of Mufasa, widely expected to be another monster, the 2024 gross will come close to matching 2023 by the end of December.

For Rob Jordan, manager of the 750-seat Capri Theatre in Adelaide, the year has reinforced the essential commercial value of the big-screen experience, something he said American distributors now accepted.

“From what we are hearing, we are being protected because they (distributors) do see us as being financially viable,” he told NewsWire.

“I think without things like Covid and the writers’ strikes, if the content is coming through and we’ve already seen that in the last two years … Barbie was a corker, Inside Out and Despicable Me more recently, there have been loads of major titles that have been huge post-Covid, record-breaking movies.

“So there is the appetite for the public to go out and see good movies when good movies are released and we are definitely experiencing that first hand.

“The appetite from the general public, to have that sort of community experience, coming to see a movie, it still exists.

“So I think there is still life in cinemas.”

For Mr Goddard, 2024 has given the industry “a chance to recover” from the combo punch of Covid shutdowns, streaming and Hollywood strikes.

Top 10 Films Aussie Box Office 2024

“It gives the industry hope,” he said.

“Moana has just got that feel about it, it is going to be a monster.

“It’s a gut feeling you get. What that does, it gives those of us still operating, you think, ‘OK, this is still an industry’.

“Yes, we’ve got to change our minds, and yes, it’s a different world, but you can still operate a cinema and make a dollar.”

The brighter outlook flows in large part from the resolution of industrial action in Los Angeles.

Twin writers and actors’ strikes shuttered production across Hollywood from May to November 2023 as the industry’s talent went to war with the studios.

Cinema operators are essentially receptacles for the content produced in America and the 2023 strikes blew up the pipeline.

Mr Jordan said that block had now largely cleared and there was attractive content ahead in 2025, including Snow White and Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning.

“From all of the reports we’ve had from America, through the independent cinema association that we belong to, the distributors are all saying they’re really excited about the upcoming slate,” he said.

2019-2024 Aussie Box Office Flourish

But despite the upward swing across the year, the 2024 take is well below the pre-Covid era and cinemas are still struggling to keep afloat.

In 2019, the domestic box office gross hit $1.23bn.

Pre-Covid, Mr Jordan said the Capri recorded about 100,000 “admits” through the door.

In the 2022-23 financial year, admits were 55,000.

In 2023-24, the figure hit 62,000.

“It’s still low, by comparison, but it is increasing year-on-year,” he said.

Cinema attendance figures are expected to hit about 55 million this year compared with more than 85 million in 2019.

Cinema Association Australasia executive director Cameron Mitchell said the attendance numbers, though much reduced, showed cinema remained a dominant entertainment experience.

“With the stabilised line-up, cinemas are again enjoying a well-marketed diverse slate of films and guests are again filling Australian cinemas,” he told NewsWire.

“Fifty-five million cinema visits annually equates to more than four times the combined live attendance of all AFL and NRL matches in 2024, highlighting that cinema clearly remains Australia’s favourite out-of-home entertainment experience and reinforcing Australian Bureau of Statistics survey results that concluded cinema remains Australia’s favourite cultural venue or event.”

Mr Cameron said he expected to see box office growth in 2025.

“Australian cinema is 128 years young and box office growth is again expected in 2025,” he said.

“Streaming companies Amazon and Apple have both acknowledged the appeal of cinema, with both committed publicly to making and releasing content exclusively in cinemas before later migrating the productions to streaming.

“Streaming compliments cinema in that it helps remind people of the power of a great theatrical story and there’s no better way to see a blockbuster than in cinema.”

He also said 2024 had demonstrated cinema’s enduring commercial power and argued the proof was in the figures.

“Several records have been broken in 2024 including Inside Out 2, which has become the highest grossing animated film in history, while collectively with Despicable Me 4 and Kung Fu Panda 4, these three films delivered over $120m to the Australian box office, which is a record for animated films during the winter holidays,” he said.