Why We're Still Being Irresponsible About Box Office

The conversation about Shazam! Fury of the Gods opening weekend box office has only proved one thing for certain:

We’re still not talking about box office responsibly.

In fact, not only haven’t we learned our lesson about how Hollywood and movie releases have changed in the past few years, but it seems like a lot of us simply refuse to accept it at all.

Why, though? Why can’t we see how the industry is changing and accept that going to the movies in 2023 is very different than it was in 2019 or before? Why do so many of us reach for a pile of lazy excuses about how superhero fatigue and bad marketing and from Warner Bros. Discovery sank another Shazam film at the box office?

It’s because we want to win Twitter arguments and feel like we know what we’re talking about, even if it’s pretty clear we don’t.

You might be thinking, “Come on Ray, it’s obvious what’s happening here. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Shazam! Fury of the Gods box office numbers both prove that the general audience is tired of superhero films. The genre is finally going downhill.”

Really? Then why did Marvel Studios and DC Films combine for $3.7 billion earned worldwide at the box office last year? What happened in between Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s $858.7 million earned just last November and the past month that burned the general audience out so badly on superhero movies? Did Santa ironically tell them all that superheroes weren’t real and they’re bummed out about it?

Or is it that with so much superhero content out there, in the form of movies and shows from both Marvel and DC, that the general audience is simply being more picky about what they actually spend money on a ticket for? After all, the three MCU movies released in 2022 were all headlined by Avengers(Doctor Strange, Thor) or in the case of Wakanda Forever, were an emotional tribute to a fallen Avenger actor in Chadwick Boseman.

Black Adam might not have made much for DC, but The Batman did($770.9 million), and it likely would have made more if WB had kept it exclusively in theaters past 45 days.

But wait, where did it go after 45 days? What changed things for it then?

Oh right, HBO Max. The WBD streaming service that boasts 96.1 million users(which includes linear HBO) and earned $2.451 billion in direct-to-consumer revenue in 2022, despite WBD’s rough fourth quarter losses, along with the rest of Hollywood.

“But surely you don’t think people in the general audience that already have HBO Max were waiting until Black Adam reached the streaming service before they watched it, do you? Come on Ray, who’s actually doing that?”

At least three of my co-workers told me that's exactly what they did last year.

Then my boss, who isn’t general audience at all and is a fan of comic book movies, took it a step further to tell me he waited for Wakanda Forever to hit Disney+ before he watched it, not because he didn’t want to see it when it released in theaters, but because timing and budget gave him the patience to see it later when he didn’t have to worry about ticket prices, concessions, gas money and everything else he might need to see it in theaters.

I know plenty of Marvel fans have gotten used to the idea that the MCU’s milkshake brings all the boys to the yard no matter what, but inflation and general economics have made it a more difficult choice for audiences to flock to the theater as much as they used to.

So maybe, just maybe, they largely decided that instead of seeing Quantumania or Fury of the Gods in theaters right at the start of 2023, they’ll wait for Disney+ and HBO Max for those, and then see Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 and The Flash in theaters, since those both are larger movies with bigger names and more audience appeal for multiple reasons. They look more like event films than Ant-Man and Shazam do, perhaps.

Now, why doesn’t that make more sense than superhero fatigue or bad marketing?

Well, the thing is it DOES make more sense and is far more logical of an explanation, but that’s not going to win you any Twitter arguments with Jenny8675309 who desperately needs to tell her 4 followers that your favorite comic book movie franchise is trash and should be rebooted as soon as possible. You need an easy button to shut up her argument, don’t you? Something that a lot of other people are grasping onto and using as a catch-all argument to explain the numbers.

That’s why you’re blaming the studio and the superhero genre, because it’s the easiest button to push to sound like you know what you’re talking about.

But of course, you’re ignoring too much context, like how The Streaming Age combined with inflation has forever changed how audiences decide what they see at the theater or not, and how those same streaming apps are part of the bottom line for these studios when it comes to making more movies for characters like Ant-Man and Shazam in the future.

So perhaps instead of tossing the dirt on their graves so quickly, you might want to wait to see how they do with home, digital, and streaming release first.

To be fair, it’s not just fans on social media that are doing this, it’s also executives and people like David Zaslav, CEO of WBD, who continue to downplay streaming and act like theatrical release is still the dominant force for content among the audience itself.

Funny enough, all you have to do to know how untrue that is, is read the part of the recent Ben Affleck interview in the Hollywood Reporter that Discussing Film and other regurgitators didn’t repost for you as a clickbait, out of context headline. Look at what he says he learned from his daughter’s attitude toward content today:

As much as that might make you cringe, ask yourself how many of those shows he listed that you watch or have watched yourself, and then think of how many people in the general audience also watch those shows, have the apps to watch them on, and then after hearing that the new Marvel or DC movie will be there in a matter of months at no extra cost to them, decide to wait until then to watch them because it’s just easier and less time consuming to do so.

Sadly though, ignoring the effect of The Streaming Age isn’t the most irresponsible thing we’re doing when we talk about box office.

No, that would be ignoring the entire reason that we fans started paying attention to box office in the first place? Remember what it was?

It was to gauge whether or not we would get more of the comic book movie content that we enjoyed, because 15 to 20 years ago it wasn’t a given that a comic book movie we enjoyed would get a sequel. Movies like X-Men, Iron Man and even Spider-Man HAD to make bank at the box office because we needed the studios to be comfortable with making more of them, and we weren’t totally certain if their bottom line needs were being met.

As of the time of this blog post, on March 19 2023, Marvel and DC have earned a combined $23.6 billion at the box office across 135 lifetime theatrical releases, per BoxOfficeMojo.com.

And of course, this doesn’t count the revenue being brought in by Disney+ and HBO Max subscribers that signed up to watch Marvel and DC content on those apps.

The point being that we haven’t needed to pay attention to box office to make sure more superhero content gets made for years now. It’s a lock. Hollywood literally has decades of data, receipts and bank ledgers to prove that superhero content sells and they should continue making it for the foreseeable future.

So if we don’t have to worry about that as fans, then why does box office mean this much to us?

Again, it’s the easy button to make ourselves feel better and look smart, even though we don’t.

All that a movie’s box office ever tells us is how popular or not a movie is, not how good or bad, long or short, memorable or forgettable it is, because those are all subjective opinions that differ for each and every one of us, even if we find a bunch of people to agree with us.

But over the years, after it was clear that comic book movies were here to stay and were more than financially viable for studios, we twisted the meaning of box office to be a measurement of how good or bad a film is, which is not only illogical, but downright ignorant to say the least.

So your argument is that only the most popular movies are the good ones? And if you don’t break box office records or have the best opening weekends then clearly that filmmaker’s energy and effort isn’t worthy of our consideration?

That’s not how it works. Fortunately. But way too many people act otherwise, and that’s where the box office talk becomes truly irresponsible.

If you’re going to care this much about box office and enjoy having discussions about numbers, trends and business, then you have to be responsible enough to include all necessary context, like the impact of The Streaming Age, and you have to acknowledge that it has nothing to do with subjective quality or whether or not the movie is good or bad by anyone’s appraisal.

Anything else is just lazy, easy button scoreboard mentality that helps no one. Least of all the fanbases of these movies and shows that are largely filled with people tired of being told their favorite movie or show is trash because it didn’t earn enough money from the general audience.

Be better than that when talking about box office. Honestly.