Summer box office bounced back thanks to 'Inside Out 2,' 'Deadpool & Wolverine'

Box office analysts and cinema owners braced themselves a few months ago for the possibility that the summer movie season could be the worst showing in a decade.

Thanks to some anthropomorphic emotions and a bad-mouthed, fourth-wall breaking antihero, the domestic summer box office scraped together $3.6 billion in ticket sales. While that's a 10% drop from the same period in 2023, it's a markedly better outcome than anyone in the industry was expecting.

"In the wake of the $4 billion 'Barbenheimer'-powered summer of 2023, expectations heading into May were tempered as the industry braced for what would certainly be a more modest summer revenue result for 2024," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.

Summer box office tallies

Entering into the summer movie season, which starts the first weekend in May and runs through Labor Day, the domestic box office was down 22% from the previous year and lacking the traditional kick-off of a Marvel Cinematic Universe flick.

In fact, it was the first time since 2009 that the summer box office didn't have a blockbuster superhero film to start the season — and it showed.

Disney and Marvel Studios have consistently launched this highly lucrative moviegoing season over the last two decades. In fact, only two films in the Marvel franchise that released at the beginning of summer have generated less than $100 million on opening weekend — not including pandemic years.

This year, the headline film for the first summer weekend was Universal's "The Fall Guy." And despite strong marketing efforts and solid reviews, the movie failed to drum up ticket sales. The film tallied less than $28 million during its domestic debut and stalled out shy of $100 million during its domestic run.

Warner Bros. and George Miller's "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" also spun out. The high-octane action flick snared just $67 million during its domestic run.

Meanwhile, Disney's "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes" overperformed expectations, tallying $171 million during its run.

But it wasn't until mid-June that the box office got a proper surge of moviegoers. Disney and Pixar's "Inside Out 2" smashed records and marked the return of the beleaguered animation studio. Through Labor Day, the film was the highest-grossing summer movie with $650 million in box office receipts.

"Thankfully May gloom turned into a much needed June boom, as a string of box office overachievers set off a chain reaction that carried forward all the way into August," Dergarabedian said.

The summer got another boost from "Deadpool & Wolverine," which arrived in late July. The third installment in the Deadpool franchise, and the first for Disney's MCU, sliced through records for an R-rated film, tallying north of $600 million domestically through the holiday weekend.

Universal and Illumination's "Despicable Me 4," Universal's "Twisters" and Sony's "Bad Boys: Ride or Die" also made large contributions to the summer box office alongside breakout hits like Disney's "Alien Romulus," Sony's "It Ends With Us" and Paramount's "A Quiet Place: Day One." The 15th anniversary re-release of "Coraline" by Fathom also padded the total with $31 million in ticket sales.

These titles also contributed to the more than $900 million in ticket sales accrued during the month of August, marking the highest August haul since 2016.

Box office analysts foresee the summer's momentum carrying over into the fall, ultimately bolstering the overall third-quarter box office results.

"Our confidence in a better than projected 3Q result is bolstered by a solid September lineup of releases including 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' (now tracking towards a reported $80mn+ opening weekend), horror title 'Speak No Evil,' and animated features 'Transformers One' (tracking for a $40mn+ opening) and 'The Wild Robot,'" Eric Handler, an analyst at Roth MKM, wrote in a research note published Tuesday. "If September finishes up low double digits from last year, the quarter would end being down low single digits."

It's unclear if the full-year box office will reach 2023 levels — last year's dual labor strikes, which disrupted production, continue to weigh heavily on the cinema slate — but there are plenty of appealing titles arriving in theaters in the coming months.

"There may not be a pound-for-pound juggernaut on the scale of 'Inside Out 2' or 'Deadpool & Wolverine,' but the aggregate of sequels from appealing franchises like Beetlejuice, Transformers, Joker, Smile, and Venom offer plenty of reason for moviegoers, theaters, and studios to be excited about the next two months," said Shawn Robbins, founder and owner of Box Office Theory.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.